Jurassic World: Time Crash
by Troodon formosus
Summary: In the summer of 2015, an ancient prophecy from Isla Nublar's past comes terrifyingly to life when the island is removed from reality and the timeline collapses. With their lives on the line, Jurassic World's staff must grapple with monsters from the unknown, treachery from within the park itself, and the mysterious fate Isla Nublar was always meant to fulfill.
1. A Prophecy

Midafternoon on Isla Nublar. Tourists crammed Main Street, tacky merchandise in hand, kids shouting and running. In the distance, the voice of an announcer was audible, narrating the action of some great prehistoric beast reduced to entertainment. Lowery Cruthers tried to block it all out—after all, he was on break, and it wasn't all that often that he was able to get some time out of the cold, corporate environment of the control room.

He leaned back in his chair, facing away from the windows out to the packed street. Sipping his coffee—grown from Pleistocene coffee plants, naturally—he relaxed, letting himself daydream about his plans for later that night. Today had been a stressful day, and he figured he had earned the right to treat himself.

Lowery Cruthers did not live in the residential hotel like the other employees at Jurassic World. He had been assigned a room, but as far as he was aware it was exactly the same as the day he had arrived. Lowery lived in the northern region of the island, where visitors were not allowed to go, with the natives of Isla Nublar called the Tun-Si. The ancient tribe had been removed from the island in the eighties, but Isla Nublar's new owner, Simon Masrani, had been moved to allow their return. Lowery had bumped into one of the tribe's members the day he arrived on Isla Nublar, and when he was brought to the reserve in the north where they lived, he'd fallen in love with the native culture instantly.

The northern sector was also home to the last "wild" dinosaurs on the island. He thought the word "wild" in air quotes, because those dinosaurs still were restricted by modern technology—electric fences were a thing of the past on most of the island, but the "wild" dinosaurs' tracking implants conditioned them to stay away from buildings, vehicles, and people by giving them an electric shock when they got too close to something they were supposed to avoid. _Like a disobedient pet dog_ , he'd thought (but not said out loud) when the new technology was being implemented a couple years ago. But those dinosaurs did have more free-roaming privileges than the ones in the park, at least. They weren't bothered by gawking tourists, and the only vehicles that disturbed them would pass by quickly enough.

Generally employees weren't supposed to go into Sector 5's wilds unless they worked in behavioral research, but Lowery figured it was on his way home anyway, and no one would care if he just happened to bring some binoculars and climbing gear with him. He'd done it a few times before. The jungle was safer now, with the raptors exterminated; Masrani had at least had the sense to do that when Owen Grady's genetically-modified breed proved tamable. Now, Sector 5 was mostly populated by herbivores, and Lowery knew how to avoid the remaining predators.

"Lowery?" A voice snapped him out of his reverie. He swiveled in his seat to see a tan-skinned woman in shorts and a yellow tank top, roughly his age, looking anxious. Her name was Atlanta Cruz; she was one of Lowery's friends from the Tun-Si reserve.

"What's up, Atlanta?" He put down his coffee. Atlanta tended to get herself worked up often enough, but this looked different.

"I...think the island is in danger," she said. Lowery was silent. He knew she wasn't just commenting on the corporate intrusion. "It's the mountain. Sibo is restless."

Lowery's eyes widened. The volcano had been dormant for decades. "You're sure? There haven't been any—any geomagnetic storms, or, or anything."

Atlanta nodded. "I came to you because I don't think anyone else from InGen would listen. You won't see anything coming because this...isn't a _normal_ event." She took a deep breath. "Our people used to believe that this island was placed here supernaturally, and that when its time was up, Sibo would take the island back. I had always thought it was just a story, but now, I am not so sure."

"I'm listening," said Lowery.

"There are old murals in a cave under the mountain," Atlanta explained. "At first I thought they were just art. But what they show...I looked at it again and saw references to history that the original artists could not have known." She reached into her pack, withdrawing a stack of papers. Lowery was impressed at the scope of her research.

She placed the first paper down. It showed a photograph of part of the mural, and she had drawn comparisons to other Bribri artwork and written a number of notes. "The first part of the mural shows our ancient mythic history—the island being placed here by Sibo, the animals of the world raising the mountain, and the spirits in the sea being pushed aside so the Tun-Si tribe could reach the island in safety. It goes on to show a strange man in a ship speaking to our ancestors." She pointed to another photograph she had taken. "That is 1525, when Europeans first discovered Isla Nublar. The artists would have known about this, maybe even lived during that time. But what they show _afterward_ , they could not have known."

She put down another few papers, including more photographs and some copies of old legal documents. "This part shows an old man telling the people to leave Isla Nublar. I believe that is meant to be Hammond, buying the island from Costa Rica. But the interesting part is that the mural's scale changes here. Now the illustrations are separated by regular intervals of about five inches—one gap of that size for _every_ year that passes. Hammond leased Isla Nublar in 1985, but he had actually considered using it already in 1981. That year was when my mother and I had to leave. All of us were gone by 1987. These three years are represented on the mural, the three stages of our resettlement, and the gaps between the illustrations are all exact to the number of years between each stage."

"But—but how could they have done that?" Lowery asked.

"I don't know," Atlanta said. "But it goes on...here, the next one. 1993. It shows a Tun-Si woman coming back to the island—my mother, I think—and causing creatures to come up from the soil and chase InGen away. In real life, the same night she went back to the island, the dinosaurs—creatures brought back from extinction, pulled up from the earth—were released and forced InGen to abandon Jurassic Park."

"And it's still shown in the right year?" asked Lowery.

"Exactly," confirmed Atlanta. "1999, it shows Sibo erupting, driving back many of the dinosaurs. In real life the mountain erupted in 1999, which was what made it safe for people to return. Again, 2002. Another man comes to the island after the dinosaurs have been alone on it for a long time. That, I think, is meant to be Simon Masrani. It shows him telling the dinosaurs to stay back from the volcano, and he protects an area near it for the Tun-Si to return. In real life, he did exactly that. We were given our new home by Sibo's foothills, where the dinosaurs cannot go. And here—2005. More and more people, not of our tribe, flood the island. In 2005 Jurassic World opened to the public."

"Making it look like the island isn't really owned by you at all," realized Lowery.

"Which means our time is running short," agreed Atlanta. "2013, it shows the mountain beginning to awaken. In real life, there was a geomagnetic storm in 2013 that damaged the park."

"Ooh, I remember _that_ one," muttered Lowery. 2013 had been a tough year for him. _The servers are down, Lowery! We need to get the satellite map working, Lowery! Find a way to turn communications back on, Lowery! Another tracking implant failed, Lowery! Scratch my back, Lowery!_

"The final one is strange. It corresponds with 2015, but there are two of them, and neither one good."

"What are they?"

Atlanta put down her final papers. "The lower one shows a giant white creature emerging from the ground, killing many people. It doesn't resemble any creature from our stories."

Lowery looked more closely at the photograph. He recognized the creature immediately. "Oh, my god, that's _Indominus_ ," he said in disbelief. "It's recorded in this? Are they saying—are they saying it's going to escape, that it's going to kill?"

"Maybe not," said Atlanta, and her tone indicated that this alternate possibility wasn't necessarily something to be relieved about. "The upper part for this year shows the volcano erupting and the island lifting up from its outline in the lower illustration, rising out of existence."

"And you think we're living the upper part?" asked Lowery.

"The lower part is faded," explained Atlanta, "and not with age. It was painted that way. It's meant to show that time splits apart this year, with a shadow of this island and its inhabitants remaining in the world while the real thing moves somewhere else. I think it will happen soon."

"Um. How soon?"

"We need to get these people off of the island. As soon as we can."

Lowery gulped. His boss wasn't going to like this. "I'll head back to the control room. Claire needs to know. I'm—I'm not sure if she'll listen to me, but if she won't, I'll find _someone_ in authority who will. We've gotta get this island evacuated!"

He looked around, noticing that they had been attracting a bit of attention from the other patrons of the coffee shop. Lowery awkwardly met their gaze.

"Yeah, you should all, like, go home," he said, suddenly unable to muster the same confidence he'd had a moment ago. "Things are gonna get weird around here, we might all die, so you need to...um...leave, like soon."

"You wanna get out, or you're hanging around for the apocalypse," Atlanta said loudly, hands on her hips. "Not my problem if you do. But if you wanna make it out, beat it."

Taking a moment to appreciate her help, Lowery darted out from the coffee shop, weaving through the crowded street toward the Innovation Center. From there it was a quick ride to the Control Room, where he desperately hoped his boss Claire Dearing would bother to take him seriously. In truth, he didn't have much hope for that, but trying was better than nothing.

So much for tonight's plans.


	2. Sibo Awakes

**Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Let me get this straight," Claire moved her hands as if forcing something down (perhaps it was Lowery's self-worth). "You're telling me I should evacuate the island—completely and permanently—because of a myth?"

"No no no, that's—that's not what I'm saying," insisted Lowery. "I just think we should check the volcano, just in case, see if anything unusual's been happening. Send somebody up to the power plant, take some readings."

Claire's expression was unreadable, as usual. "What would I tell them? That a two-thousand-year-old cave painting said the park would be destroyed?"

"It's not a _cave painting_ , it's a _mural_ ," corrected Lowery.

"And besides—" Claire wasn't listening to Lowery— "we are in an _extremely_ busy part of our year; none of our staff will be available until the American summer holiday is over. Next month I can see if anyone is available to take some readings on the volcano—"

"But what if we don't _have_ until next month?" pestered Lowery.

"If you had any _evidence_ that the park was in danger, Lowery, I would send someone to look into it, but the fact is that you don't," Claire argued, a growing air of finality in her voice. "We do not base our actions on superstition and myth. We are a fact-based, scientific organization. If you don't agree with that policy, I suggest you begin searching for a new job."

"Um...Miss Dearing?" Another voice cautiously interjected. Vivian Krill, her large eyes looking worried, had turned to the pair of them. "We've...just picked up a large amount of geomagnetic interference originating under the north of the island."

There were a few tense moments in which Lowery and Claire looked at one another.

"Do...do you want me to issue an alert?" asked Vivian.

"We've had experiences like this before," said Claire, trying to maintain a reasonable tone of voice. "The volcano scare in 2013 didn't amount to anything. These storms can precede eruptions by months, even years. There's no reason to assume that—"

The Control Room suddenly rattled, the ground shaking underfoot. The constant blue glow of the giant holomap flickered, and then went out, along with all the computer screens in the room. The whole island lurched.

***  
 **Research Lab - Northern Isla Nublar**

The lights, and the ever-present electronic whir of the research lab, abruptly shut off as a shockwave struck the building. Dr. Henry Wu looked up from his work in alarm—the sudden shaking had knocked precious test tubes of DNA from the shelves, and some shattered on the floor. He managed to grab a few before they landed, but it would be months before he could undo the damage that had already been done.

As the shaking subsided, he made his way cautiously to the door. In the event of an earthquake it was best to be outside.

But as he left the building, sterile airlock hissing behind him, he saw that this was not the result of any earthquake. In the distance to the west, a vast column of ash was rising from the crater of Mount Sibo, and a piercing light shone from behind the cloud into the sky.

But strangely, the mountain itself appeared unchanged, undamaged. And in spite of the pyroclastic cloud billowing high into the tropical summer sky, not a bit of ash or dust fell upon Isla Nublar.


	3. Chaos and Calm

**Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Get me a damage report!"

"We're working on it," mumbled Lowery, his fingers moving nimbly over the touchscreen. They had managed to get the thing working off of backup power, but that would run out if he couldn't get the geothermal plant or solar trackers back online. The holomap at the front of the Control Room was still ominously dark.

The door to the Control Room opened, but hardly anyone took notice. Claire's assistant Zara Young entered in a hurry, her black hair a mess and her normally-pale skin flushed from her run. "Miss Dearing," she panted, "there might be a problem with the visitors. Some of them—most of them—they're—"

"Hold on a moment," Claire interrupted. "Lowery, how close are you to getting the trackers online? If we don't get power back on soon, the assets will begin to wander out of their zones, and without communication to—"

"Yeah, I _know_ ," said Lowery. "I'm trying to get the trackers online, it's just a matter of resetting all of the—oh, there it goes!" The holomap had suddenly lit up, bathing the Control Room in blue. The words "SYSTEM STARTUP..." covered the map of Isla Nublar for a few seconds, then disappeared as icons began materializing all over the display.

"Are the invisible fences active?" demanded Claire.

"Give it a sec', okay?" groaned Lowery. "...There, we've got sector boundaries active, communication with outposts active...and tracking implants are live. No dinos out of their zones. Same number of warm bodies we had before, so nobody's dead, yet."

"Any damage?" asked Claire, steeling herself for the answer. An eruption of that size would have taken out most of their facilities in the north, possibly even extending to some of the visitor areas. Their more sensitive operations would be compromised for sure.

"That...is pretty weird," said Lowery, running a diagnostic scan. "I'm not picking up any damage. Like, at all. Maybe it was just an earthquake, and not an eruption?"

"Let me see," Claire pushed her way over. She performed another quick scan of the system, but no damage was reported. There were, however, some areas of the map that remained blacked out, as if nothing was there. "It...looks as though there are entire areas of the park missing."

"That's probably just from the restart," said Lowery. "It'll clear up once the system is fully operational again."

" _Miss Dearing_ ," Zara tried to edge into the conversation again. "There's a problem with the visitors outside."

"What's happening to the visitors? Lowery, you said they were fine!"

"I said they were _alive_ ," said Lowery.

"There's some sort of—of mass hysteria breaking out," said Zara. "There's all kinds of confusion, people going mad. I've got people claiming they've experienced missing time, not just hours but _years_ sometimes, there's people who say they saw things appearing or disappearing out of thin air—I ran into a few on the way up here who claim that they're workers from the old Park! What are we going to _do_ about this?!"

"Zara. Calm down. They're probably disoriented from the eruption, or earthquake, or whatever we've just experienced." She turned to Vivian. "Let Security know what's going on. Get me Hoskins. We need to get the panic under control until the delusions stop."

Vivian picked up the nearest phone. "InGen Security, this is Control. We have a mass panic in Sector 3, requesting crowd control assistance."

"Uh, ma'am?" Another of the control technicians approached Claire. "We've tried to contact the mainland to request assistance in an evacuation, but—"

"Did I give the order for an evacuation?" snapped Claire. "The media has been looking for an excuse to jump on this park for _years_! If we have so much as one major accident we might never reopen! You do _not_ call for an evacuation without my explicit permission!"

"I'm...sorry, ma'am..." the worker backed away, cowed.

Claire took a deep breath. "What did they say?"

"We...we couldn't reach the mainland," said the technician. "I tried InGen's headquarters, the Costa Rican embassy...all the lines off the island are down."

"Lowery—" began Claire.

"On it," said Lowery, already at one of the control panels.

"Ma'am, we've just gotten word back from Ferry 2," interjected Vivian. "They, ah, apparently had some kind of problem leaving the island."

Claire sighed, trying to keep calm. "Who's available to see what the problem is?"

Vivian turned to look at a nearby display screen, which was currently showing the tasks that had been assigned to various personnel. "It looks like ACU is booked checking the sector borders, so they'll be unavailable until they've reviewed all of them. We've got the Rangers trying to calm down panicking visitors, and there's no telling how long that'll take. Hoskins should be on his way here now by monorail, so—"

"Vivian," Claire interrupted. "Who _is_ available?"

"Ah...I can call Owen Grady," suggested Vivian. "He hasn't been contacted."

"Good. Send him to the dock," said Claire. Muttering to herself, she added, "I hope this isn't beyond his skill level..."

***  
 **Ferry Landing - Southern Isla Nublar**

Owen Grady stepped onto the pier as one of the Jurassic World ferries docked at the end. Walking briskly down the concrete, he looked to the sky nervously. Something was wrong with it. It was perfectly calm, not a cloud in the sky, even with the volcanic eruption. The sea, too, was very still; while normally the summer storms would be churning it up, sending waves their way, the water just rippled a little with the movements of the ferry. It just wasn't right.

He reached the end of the pier, where confused visitors were stepping off of the boat. The ferry captain was waiting for him on the deck.

"Claire sent me. She said you had some kinda problem?" asked Owen.

"Yes, it's...a little unsettling," said the captain. "Slightly over an hour ago we left the island on schedule for Costa Rica. We must have been out of range of the geomagnetic disturbance, because we didn't experience any loss of power. But as we were leaving the immediate area...we didn't."

"You...didn't?" repeated Owen, not sure if he was understanding.

"No matter how far away from the island we traveled," continued the captain, "it didn't seem to be any farther behind us. Our instruments measured our movements, so we _were_ moving. But...so was everything else, it seems. None of the geological features on the seafloor appeared to be in motion either. We tried moving north and south, but at the same distance from the island in all directions we ran into the same problem. It won't let us leave."

"But you made it back here just fine," commented Owen.

The captain nodded. "It appears that as long as we remain within the border, our progress is unimpeded, but whenever we attempt to travel more than a few miles away from Isla Nublar, we're stopped by some sort of barrier, something we can't detect. I think it may be an effect of the geomagnetic storm, pulling us back in this direction."

Owen knew, and the look in the captain's eyes said that he was thinking likewise, that this had nothing to do with magnetism. Something else was going on here. All their communication off the island had been abruptly cut off when the bizarrely-harmless eruption took place, and now one of the ferries had become trapped within an invisible boundary surrounding the entire island. And then there was the ominously calm sea and sky.

As if they were both thinking the same thing, both men turned their eyes upward, looking at the strangely cloudless sky. It wasn't so empty now, though. Just on the edge of their perception, like something seen through fogged glass, they could catch glimpses of movement far above.


	4. Asset Management

**_Gallimimus_** **Valley - Central Isla Nublar**

"Steady, girl...steady! Nothing is going to hurt you here."

The huge animal lowed, but was not as frightened now that she saw a familiar face. As the _Edmontosaurus_ calmed down, Barry slowly lowered his outstretched hand, never taking his eyes from the dinosaur's.

The brilliantly-colored creature pawed at the ground nervously. Barry shared her feeling, but if he allowed any sign of his uncertainty through, the dinosaur might sense it and panic again. They'd had quite the day trying to keep things under control since the eruption. It had sent animals frantically stampeding all over the island; thankfully no one had died, but in their panic many had charged right past their zone barriers, ignoring the electric shocks delivered as they crossed. Fortunately none of the animals kept in paddocks had made it out, but those in the open sectors had been a different, more difficult story. This dinosaur was one of the last to be herded back home. The toughest part was the zone border; their implants shocked them if they got too close, regardless of which side they were approaching from. Clearly, the people who designed that system never anticipated a mass escape of dinosaurs from their zones. A single animal could be sedated and transported back without any trouble, but what had happened today was beyond that.

Fortunately no one had died in the stampedes, and they mostly stayed close to where they belonged. Barry was glad for that. If a panicked dinosaur—even a normally-gentle one, like this _Edmontosaurus_ —had run into an area where there were visitors, the results would not be pretty for the humans or the dinosaur.

They were approaching the border of the hadrosaur's zone, and Barry knew that this would be the most difficult part. The Control Room's hands were tied, so they couldn't individually deactivate the animal's implant while Barry moved it, and ACU wasn't available to sedate it either. The frightened visitors were keeping all the park's security staff busy. Barry didn't envy them; panicked dinosaurs were one thing, but panicked humans were another beast altogether. Especially in numbers.

"Almost there," he said quietly, encouraging the dinosaur forward. He moved to her side, pushing gently on her flank. She looked ahead, out toward the open field of _Gallimimus_ Valley. A few of her fellows were there already; one of them looked over and called out, and the animal by Barry's side looked more confident. He looked in her eyes again. "Go on, go back to your friends," he said. A firmer push sent the hadrosaur moving forward. As she crossed the border, there was an audible electric buzz and she stumbled for a moment, crying out. But instead of turning around and running away, she rushed to the safety of her companions in the valley. Barry smiled and pumped a fist in the air in victory.

"That was incredible," said a voice behind him. He turned to see Jurassic World's veterinarian, Dr. Suzanne de Lange, a middle-aged European-looking woman with auburn hair. "I've never seen anyone encourage an animal across a zone boundary like that. You've really got a way with them."

"It was not so easy with the others," admitted Barry. "We had to herd them across with trucks, make sure they had nowhere else to go."

"This one didn't seem to be so resistant," said Dr. de Lange. "You were able to get her right across."

Barry shrugged modestly. "They are herd animals, Doctor. Most of them were on the other side, so when she was shocked, she ran to them instead of away."

Dr. de Lange smiled. "You don't give yourself enough credit. Everyone knows you and Owen do well with the raptors, but they haven't seen what you can do with our other animals. I can see why Mr. Masrani put you two in charge of the training program."

Barry thanked her, but was interrupted by a beeping from his side. He pulled out a handheld two-way radio, speaking quickly into it for a few seconds before putting it back. "I have to go. Trouble to the east. They said a _Suchomimus_ fell off the Sudden Drop; getting her back in could be a problem."

***  
 **Main Street - Central Isla Nublar**

"Excuse me, everyone. This is Claire Dearing, Senior Asset Manager at Jurassic World. I understand that you're all concerned, and I would like to personally reassure you that the management staff on Isla Nublar are working as hard as possible to determine the severity of the event we just experienced. While I have been informed that some of you seem to have lost those you were traveling with, we in the Control Room have been able to determine that there was no change in the number of people on the island, so your loved ones are safe, and we will begin searching for missing persons as soon as this situation is evaluated. In the meantime, if any of you are suffering from confusion I encourage you to see the nearest first-aid station to you. Our medical staff are top-of-the-line and will be able to assist you in any way that they can to recover your peace of mind. Many of you are likely experiencing temporary delusions, which is a normal side-effect of extreme stress. These misconceptions are not permanent and will fade as you calm. With this in mind, if there is anyone around you who is unable to remain calm on their own, I implore you to assist them however you can, even if all you can do is listen to them. We will make it through this crisis together if we all cooperate. Thank you, everyone."

***  
 **Paddock 11 - Northern Isla Nublar**

Beyond the wall of tempered glass, something stirred in the foliage. Looking at the creature, even when it didn't show itself (which was most of the time these days), always filled Dr. Christopher Reddy with a mixture of apprehension and excitement. He knew that the animal in there was lethal, but it was also quite possibly the greatest scientific accomplishment of the decade, if not the century. _Polygeneric hybridization_ , Dr. Wu had called it. That man's genius had unlocked a whole new frontier of genetic research—in time, they would be able to rewrite life itself, build new ecosystems. All from this first stepping-stone.

As if summoned, Dr. Wu himself appeared in the observation deck suddenly. "Dr. Reddy. How is she?"

"We sedated her and took samples, like you requested," said Reddy. "All of her stats fall within normal health parameters. We're not even detecting any reaction to the magnetic event like we'd feared."

"No, there shouldn't be. I personally removed the birdlike areas of her brain that would have been sensitive to magnetism; she's immune in that respect. Those portions of her brain are more mammalian than avian."

"I'm curious. Why that particular feature?" asked Reddy.

Wu stiffened, as if nervous. He spoke hesitantly. "I had assumed you knew. Because she is being raised on a volcanic seamount, magnetic events are to be expected. I wanted to make sure that she remains unaffected, to prevent interference in the project. Her behavior must be pure. For integrity, you understand."

"Of course. Your foresight is impeccable."

Wu smiled. "It's a precaution I felt necessary. I'm not going to have another 'frog DNA incident' on this island. Now, there is one more important piece of information I need. How old is _Indominus rex_?"

Reddy paused for a moment. "Did you ask how _old_ she is?"

"Yes, based on her biological records. Do they agree with what we know?"

Reddy pulled a tablet from a nearby desk and pulled up the cellular data they had taken from the creature while it was sedated and restrained. "Based on the length of her telomeres, number of growth rings in her bones, and dental records, she is...still two years old, just like she was before the event. Is that...what you had hoped to hear?"

Wu nodded. "It's excellent. Nothing has gone wrong. And she's behaving in perfect health as well." The last comment wasn't a question but a statement.

"Dr. Wu, she's been resting in the trees ever since we released her from the restraints," said Reddy, slightly confused. Wu simply pointed behind Reddy's back. He turned and jumped a little in surprise.

 _Indominus rex_ stood less than a foot away, separated by them only by the tough wall of tempered glass. All white skin and bony armor, she flexed her long, muscular arms and growled, showing dozens of thick cone-shaped teeth. Her normally-yellow eyes flushed red as another growl escaped her throat.

"She seems happy to see us," commented Wu.


	5. Beyond Time

**Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Um, all right, ladies and gentlemen, if you could all give me your attention for a moment," Lowery spoke over the general murmur of the Control Room. "This is my friend Atlanta, she's, um...she's pretty sure she knows what's going on right now. If you could all listen, please."

Atlanta strode to the center of the Control Room, all eyes on her. She didn't intend to let them intimidate her.

"In the simplest terms, this island's gone back where it came from," she said, loudly and confidently. Claire even glanced up for a moment from the phone in the back of the room. "Right now, we're in a place outside of normal space and time."

"How do you know that?" a technician challenged.

"Check your clock," she said simply.

The man looked at the readout on his screen. "It's four in the afternoon," he said. "Nothing unusual."

"That can't be right," another technician said. "Mine says three-thirty."

A flurry of unease passed over the room as technicians looked at their screen readouts, all finding different times of the day.

"The magnetic event probably confused the system," the first technician said, though not with full confidence.

"Anybody got a watch with the day of the month?" asked Atlanta. Another technician raised her hand.

"My watch says it's the 7th," she said. "It...was the 7th before the event, so I guess that's right?"

"No, no, it's the 18th today," another technician argued. There was another minute of people checking the dates and times with one another, none quite matching up.

"You see?" asked Atlanta. "You've all got different times and days, and not just from your clocks—you _remember_ it being those times and days. From what I've seen, the Control Room readouts all are scattered across the same day, but your individual experiences are from this same _month_."

"How is that possible?" asked Vivian. She sounded a little scared.

"I'm not done yet," said Atlanta. "Mr. Westmoreland, you can come in."

A shaken-looking middle-aged man cautiously walked into sight. "Did you...did you find a way back?"

"Not yet. Mr. Westmoreland, can you tell these people what today's date is?"

He gulped. "It's February 23rd." A murmur passed over the room. "1991."

The murmur grew louder. A few people were standing up, looking frightened.

"Thank you," Atlanta said more quietly to the man, and nodded to indicate that he was free to go.

"So—so you see, it's not just us," said Lowery. "Our system is scattered across the day, you guys are from across the month—but the island itself, the whole island, has been scattered by _years_. Even whole decades, maybe longer. The people claiming to be from the original Park aren't delusional, they're the real thing."

Claire had hung up the phone. "So you're telling us that the island has been...diffracted, across time?"

"That's not just what we're saying, that's what _happened_ ," said Atlanta.

"If you're right," continued Claire, "then how do we know that this effect is limited to Isla Nublar? How come this island is the definition for the entire event? If we left Isla Nublar, went back to the mainland—"

"Can't do that," said Atlanta.

"She, uh, she's right," agreed Lowery. "The ferry couldn't make it...it's like the island's under, under some kind of..."

"Force field?" said Claire incredulously.

"That...was what I was trying to avoid saying," said Lowery sheepishly.

"Whatever you call it, the fact is that the ships can't get off the island. They're being blocked," said Atlanta. "As far as we can tell, this island is all there is out there. We're surrounded by a barrier, and we can't tell what's on the other side—if there's anything at all. The only thing we know for sure is that time has crashed on Isla Nublar, and it's all from Sibo's eruption. Some sort of energy built up under the island, my ancestors saw it and were able to document the future, and _now_ , it reached a breaking point and we're seeing the effects."

"All right. I'll buy your story for now. How do we reverse it?" asked Claire.

"That I don't know," admitted Atlanta. "If we want to find out, we're gonna have to put together all these broken pieces. Something's set in motion events that should've come to their conclusion a long time ago, and if we don't figure out how to finish what was started when this island first appeared, we might be stuck here a long, long time."


	6. The Vanishing Pacific

**Ferry Landing - Southern Isla Nublar**

Owen walked out to the end of the pier, staring off at the horizon. Something was changing out there—those indistinct things just beyond the range of his vision were becoming clearer. But the better he could see, the less obvious it was what they were. Somehow they were becoming even more unidentifiable the clearer they became. One thing was certain, though: they were definitely moving, and it looked purposeful. These were no aimless drifters.

His thoughts were brought back to Isla Nublar by a distant _whump_. He felt the air pressure increase slightly, as though the atmosphere were compressed. The ocean rippled. Owen looked at the water lapping against the pier—they were no longer reaching the wet line that marked the water level. His Navy training rushing back to him, he recognized the telltale sign of one particular maritime disaster: a tsunami. The ocean receding this quickly could only mean that it was building into an enormous wave, set into motion from an underwater quake.

Owen's hand flew to his radio, and he quickly called up the ferry. It had set off again to try and find any weak spots in the field around the island.

"Ferry 2, this is Owen Grady, do you copy?"

The radio crackled, but the response came through. " _This is Ferry 2, we copy._ "

"You need to get back to the landing, quick. Water's receding fast, probably a tsunami on the way. With the field in place you won't be able to get far enough out to sea to avoid it."

" _Received and acknowledged. We're returning immediately._ "

Owen considered running for higher ground, but made himself stay. Some of the tourists had volunteered to go on the ferry and seek out an escape route. He couldn't just leave them here. In the distance he couldn't see the cresting wave, but the water level was still dropping, exposing the seabed. He radioed the Control Room as well, requesting a monorail to be sent down and advising them to keep anyone away from the shores.

He squinted and looked harder toward the horizon. The wave should be visible by now. For a moment he thought that the force field might have blocked it, but if that were the case, why would the sea level be dropping?

The ferry was now within sight, making its way quickly toward the pier. By now, the sea level was low enough that the third of the pier's length closest to land was completely exposed. Crew members were already on deck, preparing to make an emergency docking.

Owen glanced at the horizon again. Still there was no sign of the tsunami. _What the hell was happening?_

As the ferry clunked against the pier a little faster than usual, members of the crew immediately leaped onto the pier and began tying off the ferry. Owen rushed over to assist them. Moments later, there was a louder clunk as the ferry hit the rocky seabed.

They rushed to get everyone off the boat, hurrying them toward the waiting monorail. The ferry had sunk so low that the bridge wouldn't reach the pier, so Owen and the crew had to help passengers up to it. As Owen pulled one of the tourists onto the pier, he heard a loud, rocky crunching noise in the distance that drew his eyes toward the horizon again.

The water was finally doing something of note, but it wasn't rising up into a tsunami. Instead, it was doing just the opposite: it was beginning to simply drop out of sight. As it did, there was a weird rippling in the air immediately over the drop.

With another crash, the drop moved visibly closer, and the rippling in the air came with it. Now the seawater rushed faster than ever before toward the edge—and poured out of sight.

"Oh, that can _not_ be good..." muttered Owen. "We need to get everybody onto the island, right now!"

With the ocean gone, the seafloor was completely visible, and rapidly disappearing. Chunks of it broke away, falling out of sight, leaving Isla Nublar a plateau in the middle of a bottomless pit. Everyone ran for the monorail, but the crumbling seafloor was catching up quickly.

One of the visitors tripped and fell, and Owen rapidly doubled back to pull him to his feet. The collapse had reached the end of the pier, and the ferry tumbled out of sight. The ropes holding it to the pier snapped, and a sizable piece of the pier itself broke away with the ground beneath it.

The pier breaking apart behind them, Owen and the tourist sprinted for the mainland, where the others were retreating toward the monorail. Owen risked a glance back and saw that the collapse was mere feet behind them and still gaining—they wouldn't make it. With the shore barely ahead, he shoved the man toward solid ground, hoping it would hold.

Owen felt the ground fall away beneath him, and he desperately tried to hold onto the edge of the crumbling pier. He managed to cling to it, but the ground beneath was cracking apart—more slowly than before, now that it was near the island, but soon enough the pier wouldn't have any support.

"Owen! Grab this!" The captain had tossed him a life preserver, the other end secured to a mooring on the dock. Owen reached out with one arm and clung to the life preserver moments before the remainder of the pier broke free of the docks, falling soundlessly away into the abyss. Owen fell, but the rope held true and he hung in midair just a few feet beneath ground level. As he watched, the pier fell out of sight into the blackness, and the rippling motion of the air swung around beneath him and appeared to close off. He realized what it must have been: the force field around Isla Nublar, moving along with the collapsing seafloor and sealing the island inside on all fronts, including _below_.

He looked forward. He had expected some kind of pillar of land to be supporting the island, but there was nothing beneath it; Isla Nublar was floating, somehow suspended above the void. And that wasn't all.

On the underside of the island, now exposed, was a dry and rocky topography to mirror the one overhead. Somewhere far to the north, he could even see a mirror of Mount Sibo, a plume of smoke and ash wafting from its crater downward into the void below.

***  
 **Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Would someone please tell me what just happened?"

Vic Hoskins did not like being kept in the dark, but that seemed to be all that had been happening since the supposed volcanic eruption.

"I've told you, we don't have information right now," said Claire, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. "When we know something, I'll tell you. But for now—"

"For now, I can tell you we _do_ know one thing for sure," interrupted Hoskins. He now addressed the whole control room. "The whole goddamn ocean just disappeared, seafloor and all. Dropped away into a bottomless pit, and there's not a thing to see out there anymore. This island is all that's left. Our raptor specialist just told us he saw a reverse island, just like this one, underneath, with a whole other volcano and everything. Something's keeping us afloat while everything else falls to hell, and I wanna know what it is. 'Cause that thing, it's probably gonna save our lives in more ways than this."

"If you'll allow me to speak," snapped Claire, "there are more important things to concern ourselves with at the moment. We are losing water, fast. Vivian, what's our status on the lagoon outflow?"

"Stopped up tight," said Vivian, "but they're having trouble damming the Jungle River. We had some sandbags to dam the southern delta, but without the beaches we can't make any more, and the northern delta is still open. And the whole North River is already drained out. We couldn't dam it in time."

"Use sand from the visitor beach on the lagoon," said Claire. "With the North River gone, the Jungle River is our only reliable source of fresh water. Until we can get a desalinization system assembled on the Lagoon, we'll be running on backup water unless the Jungle River is fully dammed up, can you make that _very_ clear to them?"

"Yes," said Vivian meekly.

"You're gonna have to face facts, Claire," said Hoskins. "You're not just running a park anymore. This is a survival situation now. You're gonna need to change tactics. If you don't think you're up to it, I'm ready to—"

"I _am_ up to this, thank you," said Claire, trying to relax her clenched fists. "If I need security advice I will contact you. But in the meantime, it's more pertinent that you oversee ACU and the Rangers damming the Jungle River. As you said, this is a survival situation, and water needs to be our top priority."

"All right," said Hoskins, looking swayed but not breaking eye contact. "But you'll see things my way. Eventually."

***  
 **Jungle River North Delta - Eastern Isla Nublar**

Katashi Hamada slammed the last of the sandbags in place, finally stopping the relentless flow of water. The river had slowed up as it drained, but with the southern delta blocked off, its entire flow was now concentrated in the north. Wiping his brow both of sweat and river water, he climbed out of the now-dry section of riverbed.

The remainder of ACU's elite squad greeted him as he wrapped up the damming of the river. It hadn't been quick; they'd lost more water than he personally thought they could afford, but at least they weren't losing any more.

"Looks like it'll hold," he observed, surveying their work. The southern delta's dam had been reviewed already and was up to his standards. "We might have done just enough to save this island. Good work."

They all exchanged a moment of congratulations for one another, but there was an air of uncertainty around it all. No one knew what would happen next, what to be ready for. Reacting to dinosaurs was one thing; dinosaurs could be predicted. But whatever was happening here...

"Just got a call from Owen Grady," said Austin, Hamada's partner and leader of the other elite team. "He's proposing a venture to Mount Sibo through the maintenance tunnels. Says he thinks there might be something in there, a key to what's going on. Hoskins is behind it too."

"Where's he want to rendezvous?" asked Hamada.

"Weather station. It's got the quickest route to the geothermal power plant. Apparently it's still off the grid," Austin informed them.

"In that case we'll stay on alert. No telling what's turned up down there."


	7. To the Power Plant

**Control Room - Central Isla Nublar  
**  
"Can you get a lock on them?" Claire asked.

"The reception in the tunnels looks like it's...sketchy, at best," said Lowery, looking back and forth between the little screen of his terminal and the huge holomap. Screens featuring the views of head-mounted cameras were pulled up on one side, but the other side—showing a scaled-down map of the maintenance tunnels—was giving them difficulty.

"There isn't a way for you to—I don't know, enhance our view?"

"Look, the technology doesn't just _work_ like that. Whenever they pass under certain areas, the tracker loses connection. We can still see what they're seeing, and it looks like that's the best we're getting right now."

Claire huffed with frustration. Owen's mission to the geothermal power plant was going well so far, at least; they hadn't run into any trouble. But she would have been so much more pleased if she knew how far from their destination they actually _were_.

Lowery, however, seemed willing to at least try and help with that. "Maybe, if I check the markers as they're passing through the tunnels, I can keep track of their location whenever we lose them," he suggested.

"Yes, do that," acknowledged Claire.

When the maintenance tunnels had been rebuilt, InGen had the common sense to add distance markers throughout them so that employees could tell their location within the uniformity of the passageways. Green markers indicated a north-south tunnel, yellow indicated an east-west tunnel. Each marker was labeled with a number, similar to mile markers on a highway, to indicate how much distance had been covered, using the Control Room as a zero-degree reference point.

"Okaaay...they just passed one point five north," said Lowery.

"Good, they should be there within the hour," commented Claire.

Some time passed.

"They passed one point six north."

More time passed.

"One point seven north. Took a turn to the east, passed two point one west."

Again, some time passed.

"Two west, still heading westward. Ooh, they passed a map that indicates they're approaching—"

"Lowery," Claire interrupted. "When I said monitor their location, I didn't mean with this level of...frequency. Can you find something else to do to entertain yourself while we wait for more significant progress?"

"Fine, all right," mumbled Lowery.

***  
 **Maintenance Tunnels - Beneath Isla Nublar  
**  
"Owen," said Barry, motioning him over. "You should see this."

The ACU personnel came to a halt behind them. They had approached quite an unusual sight: an unplanned junction in the maintenance tunnels lay before them, with a third, much larger tunnel branching off of the one they were in. The new tunnel intersected theirs at an odd angle, like it hadn't been planned to attach to their own, and was built in a very different style as well, with a grate over the floor and large, bulky pipes in the ceiling.

"Reminds me of the maintenance corridor behind the gym at my high school," commented one of the ACU personnel.

"It's definitely a _retro_ look, that's for sure," agreed Owen. "Why in the hell isn't this on our maps?"

"Perhaps it shouldn't be," said Barry. "People were taken from different points in time when the event occurred. Why should it only work for people? Why not places?"

"You think this is an old tunnel, from the old Park?" inquired Hamada.

"Unless someone from Timack has been working on a pet project without our noticing," said Barry.

"Probably not," agreed Hamada. "Maybe these old tunnels can give us a quicker route. Is there a map anywhere?"

They entered the old tunnel cautiously, taking a step down into it—the greater size of this tunnel meant that its floor was a few inches lower than theirs. There wasn't much inside; they saw a number of fuel barrels, some metal beams left over from incomplete construction projects, and an unattended forklift. Owen looked the vehicle over, hoping for a map inside, but it appeared empty.

"Nothing here," he announced. "Probably should stick to the tunnels we know. Don't want to get lost in here."

Before they could make their way back, they heard a noise coming from around a corner in the old tunnel. Everyone tensed up, guns silently lifted toward the source of the sound—a clicking noise, like claws on metal.

"Sounds small," Owen whispered.

"Raptor?" asked Austin.

"Maybe," confirmed Owen. "Might not be fully grown."

The sound came closer, and everyone tensed.

A docile bleating noise caused them to calm down. A black-and-white goat trotted around the corner, eyeing them all for a moment.

A collective sigh passed over the humans.

"Folks, I give you the ferocious Jurassic Goat," announced Owen.

***  
 **Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Ah, I think we may have a problem," said Lowery, speaking up for the first time in a while.

"The goat is not a problem. It's probably from the feeding compound in the old Park, assuming it came with the tunnels," said Claire, a little sarcastically.

"No, no, not the goat," said Lowery. "You said to occupy myself with something else while we waited. I've been looking over the dinosaurs on the monitor, because I figured maybe if the people came from different points in time that maybe the dinosaurs did, too. I mean, we rounded up the ones we detected outside containment, but I figured maybe some of them might have shown up from other points in time, like ones from before the fences were taken down, maybe even old Park stock, or that they—"

"Get to the point. What's wrong?" asked Claire.

"We, ah, are missing the _T. rex_ ," said Lowery.

Claire was silent for a moment. "How is that possible? Did the gates open? Is there a breach in its paddock wall?"

"I'm not sure, no, and no," said Lowery. "I'm running additional scans of the island, but her tracking tag isn't showing up anywhere. No one saw her disappear, but we haven't checked paddocks since the event, only dinosaurs in the field. She was definitely in her paddock before, but she's not in there _now_ , and it doesn't look like she's anywhere _outside_ of it, either."

"Just like my socks in the wash," commented Vivian. This earned her odd looks from everyone around her, and she supposed that the comment was not incredibly appreciated. "Sorry."

Claire took a breath. "Have there been any reports from the field? Sightings of escaped dinosaurs? Any REDLINE activations?"

"Haven't heard a thing," said Lowery. "Looks like she's just gone. I mean, some of the tourists disappeared; maybe some dinosaurs disappeared too."

"For all of our sakes, let's _hope_ she's just gone," said Claire. "We have enough problems without a rogue rex on the island."

***  
 **Maintenance Tunnels - Beneath Isla Nublar**

Eventually, they had been forced to use the old maintenance tunnels to make it the rest of the way. It seemed that in the north, it was mostly old tunnels from Jurassic Park and fewer new ones from Jurassic World. It looked like other structures from the old Park were around now as well, disconnected from Jurassic World's computer system and thus off its map. They'd passed by signs directing them to a marine facility and a desalinization plant, though with the ocean drained away it was likely that they had been destroyed.

"Almost there," Hamada announced, indicating a sign directing them to the geothermal power plant. "If this pattern continues, we might be seeing the old power plant, not the new one. If that's the case, it's pertinent that we shut it down before it overloads. The power plant at the old Park wasn't automated like the new one, and it was known for being...unstable, if records are to be believed."

"How do we shut it down?" asked Owen.

"There should be an instruction manual somewhere inside the— _incoming!_ " Hamada shouted, looking past Owen. The group spun to face whatever was headed for them, and heavy footfalls echoed along the grated floor.

But when the source of the noise burst into view, they saw again that it was not a dinosaur—this time, it was a human. When he saw the group, he stumbled to a stop.

"InGen sent you?" he panted. "You're with the mercenaries?"

"We're with InGen," confirmed Owen. "I don't know anything about any mercenaries, but you're safe with us. What's going on down there?"

"I—I'm not sure," he panted. Now that he had stopped, they got a better look at him: he was older than them, possibly in his fifties or sixties, lightly mustached, wearing a light gray-green buttoned shirt. "One moment, there were raptors—I think they're gone, but the others—my daughter, have any of you seen my daughter?"

"Calm down," said Owen, trying to place a hand on the man's shoulder. "She can't have gone far—"

"You don't understand, _I need to find my daughter!_ " the man shouted.

"SIR! We'll search the area!" shouted Austin. "Right now, I need you to try and _remain calm!_ "

The man seemed to calm down slightly, but he was no less the worse for wear. "Oh, God...if anything happens...her mother, she'll never forgive me..."

Hamada was already taking his ACU team further down the tunnel, in the direction the man had been indicating. Owen put both hands on the man's shoulders. "If she's around here, we'll find her. There's a lot of confusion on this island right now, but we're sorting things out. How long ago did you last see the others you were with?"

The man gulped. "I'm not sure. Everything's a blur—I think it was a few minutes ago, but—but somehow I feel like it's been longer than that. If she's still with the others, she might have a chance, but—Oscar, he—he didn't make it out..."

"How many others were you with? Actually, more importantly—who are you?"

He took a breath to steady himself. "I'm Dr. Gerry Harding. Jurassic Park's head veterinarian. I was with four others—my daughter, a native woman, another of our scientists, and one of your mercenaries."

"Dr. Harding?" said Owen, recalling the name from old files. "I'm afraid it may have been a little longer than a few minutes since the others vanished."


	8. Rex

**Control Room - Isla Nublar**

Dr. Harding remained in shock after being brought into the Control Room by Owen, but he was improving. Lowery was able to confirm that he was who he said he was using InGen's archived database, despite the archive's damaged and incomplete nature. There was still no sign that any of his companions had appeared in the tunnels nearby despite ACU's best efforts, but fortunately they hadn't found any evidence that the raptors Harding had been pursued by had carried over from the original timeline either.

"Dr. Harding!" Atlanta strode into the room quickly, and he looked up. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine—have we met?" he asked, sounding confused. "I'm afraid I don't recognize you."

"I'm Atlanta Cruz," she said. "You're from earlier in time. But you must know my mother, Nima?"

"Nima has a daughter?" he asked, a little surprised. "You look close to her age. They told me that we'd traveled in time, but..."

"I'm friends with your daughter Jess," explained Atlanta. "We met after the incident. You must have come from before then."

Harding sighed with relief. "That means Jess survives."

Atlanta nodded. "You and my mother escaped the island with her after the incident. My mother and I owe everything to you."

Harding now looked a little saddened. "But there were two others with us...a mercenary named Billy Yoder, and a scientist named Laura Sorkin. Do...do you know anything about them?"

Atlanta shook her head. "I've never heard those names."

Harding sighed. "Maybe they found another way out. Or...if you're from the future, maybe they appeared from a different point in the past?"

"I have a hypothesis," said Atlanta. "I think that, other than the Jurassic World staff, people appeared from the past during emotionally-significant points in time. Everyone outside that I've spoken to experienced the event during a moment of emotional or spiritual importance to them. It's why we've seen people appear from different points in time, instead of all at once, and why some people never appeared at all."

Hoskins stepped in suddenly. "What's that you say?"

Atlanta looked a bit upset at being interrupted, but repeated her thoughts. "I said that the people who appeared here showed up from points in their lives when they went through a moving emotional moment, the moment when they put their soul into the island. It looks like they all appeared at the location of that moment."

"Could that've happened to the assets?" asked Hoskins.

"The dinosaurs?" asked Atlanta. "Maybe the smart ones. The ones that can experience powerful emotions."

Hoskins turned to Claire. "Call up ACU. I think I know where our _T. rex_ is."

***  
 **Visitors' Center - Western Isla Nublar**

"What the hell...?"

For the past couple hours, Ray Arnold had been in a maintenance shaft fixing an issue with the computer system, and he'd been pleased with his workaround—when he presented it, Hammond had hinted that such work merited a raise. But when he reemerged, everyone in the control room was gone. Probably all went on lunch break without him, again. Nedry hadn't even bothered to throw out his candy wrappers on the way out.

This was _not_ turning out to be the straightforward job he'd been promised. The dinosaurs had been a shock, of course, but he'd assumed that would be the worst of it. But it was turning out that the... _eccentricities_ of his coworkers were just as difficult. Even the Navy hadn't been as tough as putting up with Nedry's sloppiness, Muldoon's paranoia, and Hammond's casual disregard for expenses all in one.

With a frustrated huff, Arnold made his way toward the rotunda. They'd probably all be in the unfinished cafe. There had been quite a lot of noise earlier, and it hadn't died down; it sounded like the construction workers were tearing walls apart.

"Would you keep it down? People are trying to work in—"

He stopped. There was something standing in the rotunda, and it wasn't one of the construction workers. The titan swiveled its head around to face him, blood still on its foot-long teeth.

Standing stock-still, his mind raced to find an escape. It could just wait him out if he retreated into the control room, but there was an open unfinished wall—

Arnold took a dive to the side, away from the huge jaws. Attracted to his movement, the tyrannosaur lunged toward him, stepping over demolished construction scaffolding and fossil pieces. Arnold risked a look over his shoulder and rolled behind one of the rotunda's pillars as the animal's jaws slammed shut where he had been a moment ago. It had now positioned itself between him and the unfinished wall, but he might be able to make it to the doors.

What he wouldn't do for a cigarette right now.

But as he prepared himself to make a mad dash toward the main entrance, the doors burst open from the outside. A group of soldiers rushed in, taking aim at the surprised tyrannosaur, which bellowed at them. A large gray-haired man standing behind the soldiers shouted out.

"Like the first time! Give 'er hell!"

The soldiers opened fire, but instead of bullets, Arnold saw what looked like jolts of electricity shoot out. The dinosaur took a swipe at them with its jaws and they scattered, keeping their eyes on her. A second round of fire made the dinosaur groan in pain, but she didn't fall.

One of the soldiers spotted Arnold sheltering behind the pillar. "Sir—we're here to extract survivors. We've got the situation under—"

With a _smack_ , he was hit by the dinosaur's tail, flying into the back wall. His gun clattered to the ground. Not to leave the man defenseless, Arnold made a grab for the dropped gun. It didn't look like any gun he was familiar with; it definitely wasn't one of InGen's usuals. It looked almost futuristic. But the principle was the same. Arnold took aim at the approaching dinosaur and fired, hitting it on the snout. It flinched away long enough for the injured soldier to crawl to safety.

Another of the soldiers aimed what Arnold initially thought was a rocket launcher at the tyrannosaur, but a moment later he realized it was a net gun. The net caught the dinosaur on the face, strapping its jaw closed. It flailed with one of its feet, stumbling to one side. Locking eyes with Arnold, it began to stalk toward him, but the volley of electric shots was taking its toll.

"She's going down!" shouted one of the soldiers. The tyrannosaur lurched to one side, giving in to the shocks. The humans scattered out of her way as she fell to the floor, shaking the building to its foundations.

As the dust settled, the large man entered the rotunda and congratulated his soldiers. He approached Arnold directly.

"InGen—Hoskins," he said by way of introduction. "Come with us. You've got one helluva briefing ahead of you."

***  
 **Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Ladies and gentlemen, the asset is back in containment," announced Hoskins. "She's re-tagged—or, tagged for the first time, from her side of things. She's twenty years younger than she was yesterday, courtesy of whatever weird shit brought us all here."

"Dermatologists hate her," mumbled Lowery to himself.

"I'd also like to introduce you to another of the old Park's staff, one John Raymond Allen Arnold," continued Hoskins. "Dr. Harding, it looks like you're not the only one of the classics among us anymore."

As the Control Room settled down again, Arnold and Harding approached one another, relieved to see familiar faces. Lowery hung by curiously.

"Ray," said Harding. "How're you holding up in all this?"

"All things considered? Could be worse," said Arnold. "What about you? You're not looking so good."

Harding wasn't sure what to say. "I...I think it's your future," said Harding. "In the future, something...a lot of things go wrong. We lost power in the middle of an endorsement tour—we had multiple theropod escapes, even the raptors got out. They tell me that I escaped with my life and my daughter's, but...I'll never see any of it."

"So...Park probably went belly-up, then," said Arnold with a solemn nod. "Maybe it's not so bad that we ended up in this place. At least we've still got jobs here." He looked around for a moment. "Any idea what happened to me in the incident?"

"You lost an arm," interjected Lowery. They turned to him. "Sorry. I've read all about the incident. It's, like, a huge part of history now. It's just—you guys, you're—you're like living legends! And you're _here!_ "

"Right or left?" asked Arnold calmly, smiling a little.

"Huh?"

"Right or left arm?"

"Oh—I'm not actually sure," admitted Lowery. "Apparently they never found the rest of, um, you."

Arnold shrugged. "I guess I could've made it, then," he said. "Lost an arm, patched myself up, lived out in the jungle for a while. Gone native."

"You're taking this...awfully well," said Lowery. "Being dead, I mean."

"Well, I'm not dead _now_ , am I?" Arnold asked. "The way I see it, what happened in the original timeline doesn't matter so much as what happens to us in this one. To me, the incident never even happened. No need to worry about a future I won't be living."

Hoskins, who had walked over, clapped Arnold on the back, causing him to flinch a little. "I like this guy! I like the way he thinks! Waste of time to fret about what could've happened when we've got shit going down here." He looked about the room—when he spoke people tended to take notice. "Now that we've got our assets under control and the systems back up, we're all set to try and find out for sure what's going on here."

It wasn't every day that most people agreed with Hoskins, but today was one of those days.


	9. Beneath the Volcano

**Maintenance Tunnels - Beneath Isla Nublar**

Owen, Barry, and a number of ACU personnel had nearly reached the geothermal power plant. The maintenance tunnels might have been a mixture of old and new, but Jurassic World's power plant had been built right into the blasted ruins of the old one, so no matter which tunnels they took, they would reach the plant one way or another.

But when they finally reached the blast door, they were taken aback.

"This doesn't look like ours," mused Hamada, running a hand down the sleek, white metal. The structure was clearly a door, but there wasn't an access pad, a button, or even a handle—nothing to open it with. As he touched it, Hamada noticed that it felt warm. No, not quite warm, but...not cold. It was as if the metal matched the temperature of his own skin.

"I don't know about any of you, but I'm thinking this is _not_ '80s tech," added Owen.

"It's not from the old Park or Jurassic World. Could it be from our future?" Hamada suggested. "We've got people and assets from the past. The future isn't that much of a stretch. Maybe our eruption wasn't the final event."

Barry spoke up. "Everything in the mural has come to pass already. The volcanic eruption was the last event predicted in it. If future events on this island were predetermined past this, we would have seen it. No, I do not think this door is from our future. It comes from somewhere else."

The group searched the surrounding area for any way through, but the walls near the door held only unrecognizable symbols. An air of frustration settled over them.

After about a minute of searching, Owen approached the door again, unholstering a stun gun. "If you're not gonna let us in, I'm gonna have to find another way. I do _not_ like a door I cannot open." He fired off one shot at the door's base, getting everyone's attention. The charge seemed to sink right into the metal, but the door emitted a groaning sound and shuddered, lifting just enough to let them see light coming from the other side.

"Everybody push from underneath," said Hamada as they approached together. "We might be able to get it up."

They gripped the door by its exposed underside, pushing it upward as a group. As they felt it rise slowly, they could now hear sounds from the other side—weird rattling and rasping sounds, something very alien.

Owen found that he could now reach the other side of the door just a foot or so away. He felt around for any kind of handhold or lever, but before he could get a grasp on anything—

"AAAAAGH!"

Something had taken a hold of his wrist, digging in like a jagged saw. He fought to pull his arm back, but even as Barry swiftly grabbed him by the waist and fought against Owen's attacker, something else snapped onto his arm closer to his elbow. The rasping sound was much louder now, intermixed with ferocious snarls. A clicking of claws on the floor announced the approach of dozens more of the creatures.

Owen's left arm flew instinctively to the defense of his right before he could think to stop it. This involuntary action cost him: more jaws locked onto his other arm, and he was quickly dragged halfway under the door. ACU and the creatures were now engaged in a deadly tug-of-war with Owen as the prize.

But now, suspended on his back with his head on the other side, Owen could see his attackers. They were hideous raptor-like animals with bulging white eyes, ratty black feathers on their backs, and long, lanky arms. There were at least a dozen of them, growling and clucking with carnivorous fervor. Owen had never been so terrified in his life. He desperately twisted his head away from a particularly large creature's jaws, which snapped experimentally at his face. It wasn't in any rush to bite, but kept its blank eyes facing him, a low growl escaping its throat.

Managing to free his left arm from the creatures that had grabbed it, he swung half-blindly at the animal near his head and connected with its misshapen neck. It gave a high-pitched wail like an elk's cry and backed away, two of the other creatures rushing to its side. In a moment of clarity Owen realized that this large creature was their alpha—he recognized the defensive behavior from his raptors. For the moment the animals were distracted by their leader's call, and Owen took advantage of this to smack another of the creatures on his right arm. His friends on the other side were able to overpower the remaining few animals grabbing at Owen, and he felt himself move back under the door.

But one of the bizarre dinosaurs remained steadfastly clamped onto his right arm, which was now spilling blood all over the pristine white floor. Even as its fellows detached, the one remained as Owen was pulled back to his companions. The creature's head and neck were dragged under the door, its clawed hands flailing at the floor. It let out a snarl, and Barry rushed at it and pointed the barrel of his stun gun directly between its milky eyes. But then he rapidly spun his gun around and, not wanting to shock Owen along with the dinosaur, struck it in the head with the butt of his weapon instead.

With a howl, the creature finally let go, drawing back under the door. Clawed feet paced back and forth beneath the gap, but none of the creatures seemed to dare stick their heads underneath for fear of injury.

Owen's right arm was looking terrible. It was torn clean open in multiple places, a mess of skin and muscle and blood. His right hand hung limply, seemingly unable to move. Austin had already wrapped a tourniquet around his arm to staunch the flow of blood, but Owen had lost a lot already and was beginning to look faint. His left arm wasn't as bad, but the multiple ragged bite marks were still bleeding profusely.

Barry firmly patted the side of his friend's face. "Owen. Can you hear me?"

Owen groaned. "They messed my arm up real good..."

"Stay awake," implored Barry. "Concentrate on anything."

"Blood all over the damn floor...Claire's gonna be pissed..." Owen didn't seem to be joking. "Gotta clean that up..."

One of the ACU members named Miller was holding up Owen's arm. "There's bruising on the other side of the wounds that look like there's a toxic effect taking place," he said. "Somebody grab a med kit, we need to treat this right now."

"Barry, if I die, I'm leaving my bike to you," mumbled Owen. "Leave my golf clubs to Claire and my...ah...shit, leave everything else to the raptors."

"You're not dying," insisted Barry. "Quickly with the med kit!"

Cooper, another of the troopers, rushed over with a kit. "We've gotta disinfect the wound before we can do anything else," he said as he removed a can of disinfectant spray. "He needs treatment back in the park. We've gotta get him there, fast. He might stay conscious with a shot of adrenaline—"

"No—don't do that!" A new voice interrupted them. They turned to see a blonde-haired woman in a lab coat rush in their direction. "Give him adrenaline and you'll exacerbate his condition! He needs to have a sedative administered, as quickly as you can!"

"Ma'am, he's on the edge of consciousness, if we sedate him he could go into a coma," said Cooper, finishing the disinfection and preparing a syringe.

"The venom works in multiple stages. First is bradycardia and elevated body temperature, then an adrenaline surge and severe hallucinations. If you give him adrenaline now, when the venom triggers the surge it'll be even more severe. If you administer a sedative _now_ you'll prevent the manic hallucinatory stage entirely. With this number of bites, the toxin levels will be higher, so the process is accelerated. He needs immediate action."

Cooper's hand hovered, still holding the syringe.

"Do what she says," insisted Barry.

The woman approached closer. "You're carrying nonlethals. Animal control personnel? Do you have carfentanil?"

"Of course," said Austin. "In the tranq darts. Standard issue for ACU."

"Give him a quarter milliliter," the woman said. "That should suit his body size. Get it in him before the convulsions start—if he survives the manic stage he'll never recover."

Cooper had already withdrawn a tranquilizer dart and was measuring out the indicated amount, but a look of concern passed over his face. "A quarter-mil? That—a human couldn't survive that dose."

"She knows what she's talking about," said Barry. "She's seen this before. Am I right?"

The woman nodded. "Unfortunately I've dealt with this in the past. They're never supposed to leave the pens—the eruption must have caused damage—"

"Explain later," interrupted Barry. "Cooper, the injection. Do it now."

Cooper complied, puncturing the skin of Owen's upper arm past where the wounds were. Owen's eyes had already snapped open, but they were unsteady and strangely discolored. He had begun to twitch convulsively by the time the syringe pierced his arm, and Austin had to hold it down while Cooper performed the injection.

But within a few seconds, Owen had begun to steady. He blinked a couple times as his eyes returned to normal.

His voice was uncertain, but he seemed lucid enough. "Guys," he managed to say. "What the hell just happened to me?"

***  
 **Beneath Mount Sibo - Northern Isla Nublar**

Owen was left with Barry and a few of the ACU while the scientist, who had identified herself as Laura Sorkin, sought out a quarantine cage. Somehow they managed to lure the animals from behind the door into the cage using a stray cow that they placed in the cage. After the last of the unsightly things had passed through the gap and into the cage, they locked the door, trapping the creatures once again.

"I am so sorry about all of this," Sorkin apologized for the dozenth time. "I put them behind the door, I never thought anyone else was going to try and open it. I haven't even seen anyone else around here, I thought it was just me after the eruption."

Hamada had been about to once more delve into an explanation of what was going on, but something else caught his attention. "Hold on. You know how to operate the door?"

Sorkin looked surprised. "Of course. It's fairly straightforward, why? Is this that new system Hammond keeps talking about, the new security protocol? Is that why you're here?"

"No, it's more complicated than that. How do we get inside?" asked Hamada.

Sorkin walked up to the door and touched one of the symbols, a dark blue triangle. She moved her hand upward and the symbol moved with it, as though the entire wall were a giant touchscreen. The door began to move silently as she withdrew her hand, sliding up into the ceiling and out of sight.

"It's really an incredible piece of technology," she admitted. "If only Hammond put as much money toward research as he did to renovating the maintenance tunnels for no reason, we might actually get things done on this island."

As the door lifted, it revealed an interior room that was just as white as the walls that surrounded it, with the exception of some dirt tracked in by the dinosaurs and the blood left from their struggle. In the back was a large transparent blast window, beyond which they could see a bright light. On one of the walls was the only real damage that the room seemed to have, an opening where a mass of wires and more unrecognizable technology spewed forth onto the floor. The opposite wall was curved and went beyond where they could see from here. No light fixtures appeared to exist anywhere, but the metal of the walls themselves seemed to brighten the room on their own.

"That is definitely _not_ our power plant," Hamada mused.

Barry supported Owen to the door. "What is going on in here?" Barry asked, bewildered at the sight.

"Apparently Hammond had the power plant renovated, too," said Sorkin, shrugging. "InGen has always had cutting-edge technology, but this is beyond what I would have expected. I know that they've been reducing my funds to pay for _something_ , but I'd hoped it was more useful than just implementing strange architecture."

"I don't think this was InGen's doing," said Austin. They had approached the transparent wall—he tried to put a hand on it, but couldn't quite touch it. On the other side, a fountain-like spring of white-hot liquid metal streamed forth, winding around itself at near-impossible angles before fading into a fine mist and rising up or sinking down away from the center.

"That fluid is suspended in exactly the place where Mount Sibo's magma chamber should be located," said Hamada. "We're in the heart of the volcano right now—both the one we know, and the mirror version Owen saw on the island's underside. And I don't think it's a volcano anymore."

"Maybe it never was," said Owen, speaking up at last. "You're right, this doesn't look like InGen's doing. This doesn't look like _human_ doing."

His last words rung in the air for a minute. Everyone was silent. They'd all been thinking it, but it had taken Owen's statement to realize this obvious truth in their minds.

"Call Hoskins," said Barry. "Tell him we have found what he wants to see. Bring Atlanta as well."

"I'm on it," said Hamada, bringing up his radio.

"Hey, fellas. Look at this." Meyers, one of the troopers, had summoned them toward the barrier. "If you look at it just right...there's images in there."

She was right. For brief moments in the white fluid, flashes of movement and color were visible—and not just anything random, but familiar scenes of the geography of Isla Nublar. Most of the people were unknown to them, but on occasion—

"Was that Mr. Masrani?" Cooper asked, stunned. "I swear, I just saw him in there."

"I think I just saw Henry Wu and myself," said Sorkin. "I remember that argument, it was a few days after I was transferred here to Jurassic Park."

"Well, I think I know where Atlanta's ancestors found their inspiration," said Owen. "I may not know what the hell this stuff is, but I know one thing for sure. It's real."


	10. The Bridge

**Beneath Mount Sibo - Northern Isla Nublar**

"This is _fantastic!_ " Hoskins exclaimed. He grinned like a kid in a candy store. "What we got here is a window—we're looking into the past, everything that's ever happened on this island. All the secrets this place has got, we're gonna be able to pull 'em right out now that we've got _this_."

Barry looked over from where he had been standing, pensively looking into the temporal fluid. "The secrets of this island? Or of something else?"

Hoskins glanced Barry's way with a confused look. "What're you on about?"

"This fluid allows us to see into the past, maybe the future. We can see anything from the island's history. Not just important moments. Personal moments. Private moments. Things we would not want to see."

Hoskins scoffed. "I'm not worried about accidentally seeing two of the natives doin' the—"

"That's not what I mean," interrupted Barry. "We all have our secrets, don't we? You do. I do. The longer we look, the more likely we are to learn something about one another we would be happier not knowing."

Hoskins didn't look entirely convinced, but as Barry turned away, he could tell that the conversation had ended. Instead, he picked up his handset. "Talk to me, Control Room. Have any of your brains cracked into what we're seeing down here?"

Vivian's voice, distorted a little, crackled over the radio. "Negative. We're as in the dark as you are."

"Shit. If anything does come up, you let me know. We'll keep up the recon here."

"Will do, Hoskins."

He glanced around again. Atlanta had joined Barry's side; she hadn't been able to provide any further insight into the strange things they had discovered. She had agreed with them that this was probably the source of her ancestors' visions, but so far, none of them had seen anything that looked like the future. It was as though everything was in the past from here on out.

It was a chilling thought, one which Hoskins pushed away to the space in his mind where he put the things that upset him.

***  
 **Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"I _told_ them this should have been a nature preserve," Sorkin continued. She hadn't stopped complaining ever since she learned that the island was still a theme park. "If they'd listened to me, we wouldn't all be here right now! This island didn't need people digging around, building on top of it! The core might never have been exposed at all without the Park interfering!" She looked around, seeing that everyone was only half paying attention to her rant. "Nothing changes at InGen, I suppose. No wonder I don't work here in the future..."

For a moment Lowery considered telling her the real reason she didn't work for InGen anymore—her archived company file was corrupted almost beyond recognition, but enough was clear to tell that she had died during the incident at the original Park. But he didn't have the heart to say it, and neither did anyone else.

Instead, he turned back toward the holomap. He and Arnold had come up with an idea—if the people on the island were a mixture of various points in history, and the island itself was now a patchwork of old and new, the computer systems could possibly overlap in the same way. It hadn't been easy, but they had begun connecting the Innovation Center's network to the older one in the Visitors' Center.

"There we go—I _think_ that should fix the compatibility issues," said Arnold, stepping back from the mess of wires he had managed to connect. "The old system might lag a bit, but as long as there isn't too much of a strain on the network as a whole, we'll be able to see any of the Park's features that are still on the grid."

"Just gimme a minute to reset the holomap," said Lowery, attending the closest terminal. Pressing a holographic icon lit the map up blue, but as it went through its usual startup sequence, an unfamiliar black text box popped up, scrolling new lines of code. "That's the old Park's system linking into the new one. Should come online in a minute."

As the map of Isla Nublar came into focus, the Jurassic World icons were accompanied by red-and-yellow pixellated ones which stood out blatantly against the sleek blue of the modern screen. They appeared too small, a few of them incomplete, and with their text labels slightly out of focus and offset to the left, but they were there.

"I think we've got it," Arnold said, looking proudly at the results of their work.

"That's us, the guys who fix everything on this island," agreed Lowery.

Claire approached them, eyeing the revised map. For just one moment, Lowery expected praise, but not for long.

"Where is the geothermal plant?" she asked. "It's not showing up as a Jurassic World icon or one of the old ones."

"It must be running on its own system," guessed Arnold. "If your guys are right, and it's alien tech, that area's gonna be dark on our map even with both parks online."

This mention of the personnel at the alien site seemed to remind Claire of something. "Has any word gotten back about Owen's recovery? Will he be on his feet soon?"

"From what they said, he's getting better fast," said Lowery. "Sorkin's dealt with those things before, so she knew how to treat it."

"And even _with_ Site B as a nature preserve, there's—" Sorkin looked around at hearing her name. "What was that? The _Troodon_?"

"So that's what they are," Lowery mused. "Weird, the pictures I've seen never showed them like...that."

"You've mentioned their venom," interjected Claire. "Are there any aftereffects? Should Owen be taking any medications? Any precautions?"

"I've never seen any continued effects once the venom has been counteracted," said Sorkin. "Perhaps, if InGen had granted me more research subjects, I could have studied the long-term effects of the venom, but for the time being my knowledge is limited to short-term only."

"Vivian," Claire called, "tell ACU to keep an eye on Owen. At the first sign of any complications, bring him directly back here. To the medical ward, I mean. Have them bring him directly to the medical ward."

"Will do," affirmed Vivian without looking over.

"You're a lot more concerned about Owen than I've ever seen," observed Lowery. "Seems like you're getting along better."

Claire stiffened. "Owen Grady is a valuable resource to this park, especially in our current situation. His safety is a high priority, especially in the event of more hostile assets from the old Park appearing."

"You sure that's all?" inquired Lowery. "The way you two bicker, it always seemed more to me like—"

"Lowery, so help me, we may be trapped in an alternate universe but I _still_ reserve the right to fire you," said Claire.

***  
 **Beneath Mount Sibo - Northern Isla Nublar**

Something about the room they had discovered was nagging at Owen, and it had been ever since he'd seen the full area. Around the bend was a wide, flat wall with what might have been counters in front of it, except that they were covered in more of the strange touchscreen symbols. Its whole layout looked oddly familiar, despite the alien nature of the technology.

"It's a bridge," he said to no one in particular.

"Like on a ship?" Atlanta said, catching on. "Do you have any idea how to work it?"

"Never seen anything like this," Owen admitted. "But if we can get some more hands down here, we might be able to work something out."

Hoskins joined them, having been listening in. "If you're right, and this island's a ship, it needs a commanding officer," he said.

"And you're volunteering?" asked Owen skeptically.

"As the most senior member of InGen Security present on Isla Nublar at this time, I'm not _volunteering_ so much as I am doing my duty," Hoskins argued. "I've been with the military longer than any of the rest of us."

"As a contractor," argued Owen. "We need someone who's had real experience on a ship. I did three years with the Navy, got plenty of experience."

"Owen, as much as I admire your enthusiasm, you were a first lieutenant," said Hoskins, smiling in what he probably thought was a fatherly way. "You've never captained a ship, and maybe neither have I, but I've been in a position of military authority longer than you've been in the military at all."

"We aren't running a private security firm here," said Owen. "This island's a ship. I was in the Navy, spent my life on ships."

"Three years of it," said Hoskins. "Working with trained dolphins. I've worked with people."

"Please," Barry put himself between them. "We will not determine our commanding officer through a pissing contest. The people on this island need to feel secure. If we ask them, find out who _they_ want. No need to fight amongst ourselves. I have spent five years with the French Navy, Owen has done three with the Americans, and Hoskins, you have been a contractor longer than either of our careers, but these are all very different backgrounds. Let the people consider carefully."

This seemed to quiet Hoskins and Owen for the moment. Their newfound rivalry still showed in their eyes, though.

"My vote goes to Barry," chimed in Atlanta.


	11. Jurassic One

**Jurassic World Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

Numbers flashed across the blue holographic screen. The faces of the three nominees for commanding officer—Owen, Barry, and Hoskins—were lined up on one side, with diagrams demonstrating the percentage of the vote that each of them had. The park's technicians had converted the wristband scanners throughout Jurassic World into makeshift voting stations, allowing everyone on the island to have a say, and the three nominees had presented themselves at the park's event center and over the public announcement system. So far, both Owen and Barry were noticeably ahead of Hoskins, to everyone's relief. The park's staff were solidly behind them; Hoskins's support appeared to be coming mainly from visitors who were still disoriented and frightened from the whole situation.

But as the last votes came in, Hoskins's bar barely moved, while Barry's inched farther ahead. An indicator flashed on the screen—the number of votes received now matched the number of warm bodies on Isla Nublar.

"Congratulations, Barry," Vivian said over the radio. "The people have made their decision. You're our new commanding officer."

***  
 **Bridge - Beneath Isla Nublar  
**  
Owen clapped Barry on the back with his good arm. "You did it, man! How's it feel, being captain of an island in space?"

Barry grinned despite himself. "Not bad! It is certainly the biggest thing I have ever been put in charge of."

Hoskins managed a little artificial smile. "This is more'n just a ship, that's for sure," he agreed. "It's gonna be different than anything in the Navy. Gotta stay on your toes, my friend."

"I think my buddy here can handle it," said Owen. "He deals with big angry dinosaurs all day, he knows how to deal with a little unpredictability."

Hoskins looked as though he was going to reply when a crackling sound came from his handset. He picked it up. "Hoskins here."

Vivian's voice came from the other end. "It looks like Barry's going to have his first real challenge sooner than we thought. We've got incoming."

***  
 **Jurassic World Lagoon - Central Isla Nublar**

Heads turned skyward as there was a resounding _crash_. Something had broken through the barrier above them and was now careening toward the lagoon, trailing smoke behind it. Despite the damage, it was recognizable as a helicopter, the tailfin barely hanging on and the front partially crushed from its impact with the barrier.

The helicopter's blades were slowing, but somehow it managed to turn slightly upward as it fell, indicating that someone inside was still alive. It did not land in the water but instead soared out over the lagoon and toward the monorail bridge. Wavering back and forth, tilting to the side, the helicopter slammed into the track, grinding along it and snapping off one of its blades while the rotor was forced to a stop. The helicopter finally screeched to a halt, front end out over the edge of the bridge.

***  
 **Jurassic World Control Room - Isla Nublar**

"There was no damage to any other structures, but that hole up there could be a problem," Lowery reported. "We've already got ACU on its way to the track to check for survivors, but I'm still trying to figure out if anything else came in when the helicopter fell through."

"But nothing else on this island came from outside," Claire said. "How did that helicopter get in here? Where did it even _come_ from?"

"We're working on that," Lowery said. "If we find any survivors, we can ask them personally."

***  
 **Jurassic World Lagoon - Central Isla Nublar**

Hamada, Miller, and Meyers had been the only ACU members available at the time; everyone else was still in the tunnels. So Hamada led them out onto the monorail bridge, toward the smoking remains of the helicopter.

"It's definitely Jurassic One," Hamada said now that they had gotten close enough. There didn't appear to be any risk of explosion, and the smoke was dying down. "Mr. Masrani could be in there."

The front end of the helicopter had slipped closer to the edge of the bridge since the time it had crashed, and occasional metallic groans hinted that it was still slipping from time to time. They had now reached the helicopter and moved around to the front, but the only working door was out halfway over the edge.

"He's in there," Hamada said, peering inside. He could see the unconscious form of Simon Masrani, but the pilot in the opposite seat looked as though he had taken the brunt of the impact. His side was more crushed, and he was bleeding from the head. "I'm going to pull him out. Miller, keep me fastened when I'm inside." He handed Miller a rope that he quickly had tied around his waist. "Meyers, keep an eye on the rear of the helicopter. That tailfin is the only thing holding the front end here. If it looks like it's going to break off completely, give us a shout. Miller, if she says so, pull us out immediately."

Forcing the door open, he cautiously stepped inside. He was in the back seats, with Masrani immediately in front of him. He tested the craft's stability, carefully placing one foot on the part of the floor over the edge. It didn't feel as though it was moving, so he calculated that his weight shouldn't upset the helicopter's balance too much.

Hamada stepped forward slowly, trying to step into the front seats without causing too much of a disturbance. "Mr. Masrani. Can you hear me?" His boss didn't reply; he was out cold, the side of his head looking swollen. Now that Hamada was closer, he could tell for certain that the pilot hadn't survived the crash.

Reaching toward the seat belt, Hamada tried to unclip the buckle, but it was stuck fast. The helicopter groaned slightly underfoot; he realized that he might not have much more time. He would have to cut the belt.

He reached for his knife.

" _It's coming loose!_ " he heard Meyers shout.

As the helicopter lurched forward, he felt a sharp tug on his waist. Miller yanked him back out through the door before the helicopter had fallen far enough to prevent his escape. For a moment, Hamada dangled in midair, but a few seconds later Miller and Meyers hauled him back up to the bridge.

"Mr. Masrani's still in there. He's alive. I'm going in," Hamada said immediately. The helicopter had just hit the water with a loud splash, and in his unconscious state, Masrani probably only had a few minutes.

"We'll get a boat. Watch your back," Meyers replied quickly.

The water was a harrowing distance down from the bridge—or it would be, to any normal person. Katashi Hamada had seen and done just about everything in his time, and without hesitation he dropped his padded vest and took a standing leap off the edge.

He entered the water with barely a ripple, aiming to use his momentum to dive as far down as possible. The salty water stung his eyes as he opened them for a moment to spot the helicopter, still sinking toward the bottom of the lagoon, but he shut his eyes again and ignored the pain.

Reaching out with one hand, he felt the metal of the helicopter, door still open. He pulled himself inside, briefly opening his eyes again to spot Masrani. The helicopter had already completely filled with water; its damaged walls had not held air in for long. Within seconds Hamada had reached Masrani and cut him loose—now, the main challenge would be to get to the surface with the extra weight safely.

Pushing them both out of the helicopter as it finally hit the lagoon's bottom with a dull thud, Hamada opened his eyes a third time, judging his distance from the water's surface. They had sunk a good ten or twenty feet; even though he had only been under for a few minutes, he would normally try to ascend slowly to avoid decompression sickness at this depth, but right now that wasn't an option—for either the unconscious Masrani, or for Hamada. They weren't alone in the lagoon.

A few small fish with alarming teeth had already swum into the helicopter curiously, investigating the pilot's body and nipping at it. Hamada didn't want to stay around for anything larger to arrive.

He pushed upward, holding Masrani with one arm and pumping with the other. Trying to avoid causing too many ripples in the water, he moved them toward the surface, watching carefully as small bubbles escaped Masrani's mouth—if they stopped, it would mean Masrani was out of air.

Above him, the silhouette of a rigid-hulled inflatable boat appeared. Miller and Meyers had moved quickly to retrieve it. He directed himself toward the shadow, drawing ever closer. Masrani still had some air left; Hamada estimated that he would still avoid drowning for another fifteen seconds at this rate, and in that time, he would be able to reach the surface, if not the boat.

That was when he felt a massive amount of water displaced toward him.

He didn't risk looking back, he just pumped harder. No use being stealthy now that he had been seen. He rotated his body as he swam upward, putting Masrani on the opposite side from the approaching creature. The corals of the lagoon kept the water perfectly clear, so Hamada got a good look at what was rapidly approaching them.

He'd always known the mosasaur was huge, and he knew that water had a tendency to magnify things, but this was much, much bigger than he had ever anticipated. The thing was the size of a whale, at least, with a mouth big enough to swallow them both whole. The boat suddenly looked very tiny in comparison. Fortunately, it hadn't been as interested in him as it was in the helicopter; the massive lizard's head was turned toward the vehicle now resting on the bottom, fish and other small creatures swarming around it. Hamada didn't hesitate to rush for the surface while the mosasaur was distracted.

They broke the surface of the lagoon a few feet away from the boat, and Meyers directed it over toward them. Miller grabbed Masrani and hauled him onto the boat, checking his pulse and breath while Hamada pulled himself inside after Masrani. Before he was even all the way in, Meyers was turning the boat around as an enormous silver-blue silhouette rushed toward the surface behind them.

There was a deafening roar as the mosasaur breached the water's surface, jaws wide open. Meyers gunned the engine, and the boat sped away as the reptile's mouth slammed shut on the surface behind them. Hamada grabbed up a shock prod and rushed to the rear of the boat, but the mosasaur disappeared again. He knew it wouldn't give up the chase so quickly, though, and remained in place and alert.

But it resurfaced in front of them, aiming to cut them off before they reached safety. Meyers cursed and cut sharply to the left, avoiding the mosasaur's mouth by just a few feet. It was now rushing directly alongside them, and Hamada's eyes locked with its for a moment. Then he jabbed the shock prod into the side of its face, and with a groan, the mosasaur slid back under the water. Its silhouette was still visible alongside the boat, but as they passed over the underwater fence that separated the hotel beach from the rest of the lagoon, he saw it turn back around with a swish of its enormous tail and slither out of view. The gate in the fence raised back up behind them as they sped to safety.

***  
 **Jurassic World Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

Barry and Owen had returned to the Control Room upon hearing the reports about Jurassic One crashing into the island. They had been as confounded as everyone else to learn that Masrani had been on board, but they were soon enough presented with another problem by Lowery.

"I checked over that hole in our atmosphere, and, um, nothing else came _in_ with Jurassic One," he said.

"But something has gone _out_?" guessed Barry.

"Um, yeah," confirmed Lowery. "The weather station reported that our atmosphere...is leaking. We're losing air through the hole. It's not leaking fast, but the longer it goes on for, the more danger we're in."

"Is there anything that can be done?" Barry asked. "There must be a way to repair the damage. Perhaps in the bridge."

Arnold raised a hand. "I can give the bridge a lookover," he volunteered. "I used to be a Navy technician, I've seen some strange gadgets. I might be able to figure something out."

"We've got maybe two, three days until all our air is gone," estimated Lowery. "We'd better have something figured out by then."

Barry nodded. "Everyone here, keep doing your jobs. Ensure Mr. Masrani stays safe and recovers. Mr. Arnold, come with us; we could use your expertise. We need to find a way to keep these people safe. Nobody else is dying today."

***  
 **Sector 4 - Central Isla Nublar**

Dr. Wu looked skyward. The helicopter falling had come as a shock, but he hadn't expected anything else to happen this soon. But despite his expectations, something had caught his attention, some new movement coming down from the sky.

They weren't large. He thought that maybe they were around the size of average dogs, or just a bit bigger. But there were seven or eight of them, and they were rapidly speeding in his direction. He didn't see any wings, although they looked as though they were trailing tendrils or other appendages behind them; he wasn't sure how they were staying in the air.

The objects flew downward to the valley before Dr. Wu, startling a few grazing dinosaurs. Without delay the objects impacted the ground, throwing up small clouds of dirt where they struck, burying themselves within the soil.

Something otherworldly began to take root on Isla Nublar.


	12. Monstrosity

**First Aid - Central Isla Nublar**

"Mr. Masrani, can you hear me?" Vivian hadn't left her boss's side since he was recovered, and she'd anxiously watched as Masrani slowly came to. His injuries were patched up, and he'd slipped in and out of consciousness. Vivian hoped that this time he stayed awake.

"Vivian...?"

"Mr. Masrani! How do you feel? Are you all right? No, of course you're not all right—how did you get here? When are you from?"

"Ah...one at a time, please," Masrani said, putting a hand to his aching head.

"How did you get on the island? We've been secluded for—um—nobody really knows, anymore."

"My timing was, eh, a little bit off," he said. Vivian frowned in confusion. "It should be December for me, but I came late, it seems."

"I'm not sure what you mean," she replied. "We're all—this weird thing happened, with time—Atlanta knows more, she could tell you—"

"Time...it is just our perception," Masrani said, slipping away from the waking world. "The reality is that all of the moments, all of the moments there have ever been, are dreams...time is one. That is why the _T. rex_ is an amazing creature, no? Its vision is based...on moments..." For a moment, Masrani seemed a little more lucid again. "My pilot, is he...?"

"Your pilot...didn't make it," said Vivian.

"What a shame...he was a good fellow..."

And Masrani was out cold once more, Vivian's confusion no lesser.

***  
 **Jurassic World Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Barry, we've got a REDLINE activation on Gyrosphere Valley," Lowery said into the intercom. "Looks like there's something going on down there, could be a dino from the old Park gotten loose. Want us to dispatch ACU?"

"Yes, send ACU in. I'll send Owen with them; if the old Park's raptors are loose, he will know what to do. I would go myself, but..." He lowered his voice. "I do not want to give Hoskins the wrong idea about who should be running the bridge."

***  
 **First Aid - Central Isla Nublar**

"Mr. Masrani. If you're feeling wakeful enough, there are some things I need to ask you."

"For now, I am feeling fine. Ask away, Henry."

Running a hand through his graying hair, Dr. Wu looked down at the notes he had prepared. A lot had gone on since the event that required his attention. "I need to know from what date and time you came before arriving on this island. I believe you're aware of what is going on here?"

"I have heard many things, Henry," said Masrani. "And yet, I am not certain how much _you_ know of what is going on here. You deny knowledge of the truth of this event, and yet you act as though you have prepared for it."

"That's not important right now," said Wu. "I have...suspicions about what is happening, but I need more information to know for sure. Such as the date and time of your departure from reality, as well as how you managed to get to this island after its isolation."

Masrani sighed. "I was certain that I had the right date; December of this year seemed right. It seems I did not know for sure. I was late. The island...it still _looks_ like it is there, in reality. Perhaps it has its own versions of us there, living lives that are ours, but not ours. But as with everything on Isla Nublar, time split in two for me when I came here."

"Everyone else was plucked from a point in their past," said Wu. "But you say that you voluntarily came here, from a point in what to us would appear to be your future?"

"That is what I did," said Masrani, closing his eyes and lying back. "I have...a little more choice in this matter than others. It is only a little thing, but I had to make sure that I learned as much about what we need to do before it happened. It is a sort of...cheating." He chuckled weakly. "But I was not expecting to be drawn into the void. We had to ram the atmosphere to get in. I suppose I do not think of everything."

"We can come back to that later. In the meantime, how much do you know about _Indominus rex_?"

"How is she?"

"She's fine. Are you aware of her origins?"

"You said she is part _T. rex_ , but intelligent, with parts of other dinosaurs. Is there more to her?"

Wu considered this. He had thought that, if Masrani was from the future, he would have learned about the hybrid's purpose from Wu by then. If Wu had not disclosed the real reason he'd created it even after they expected the event to occur, he must have had good reason for it. "Nothing important. You need rest, Mr. Masrani. I'll speak with you again later."

***  
 **Gyrosphere Valley - Central Isla Nublar**

Owen's arm was still in bad shape, but it wasn't enough to keep him from wanting to go out into the field with ACU. They'd approached the location where the warning beacon had been activated, but at least for now, nothing out of the ordinary was in sight. A few dinosaurs rested and browsed nearby, but all of them looked like Jurassic World stock.

"I'm not seeing our REDLINE," mused Owen. "You fellas see anything in the trees?"

"Nothing," confirmed one of the ACU men, who had donned infrared goggles. "Just the normal birds and shit. Nothing big enough to eat you." He turned around, scoping the area one more time to be sure—

"GAH! Watch where you're running!" The trooper removed his goggles and jumped in surprise again. "Dr. Wu, sorry sir, what're you doing out here?"

Wu panted from his run. "They're—they're in the ground," he said. "I was on the hill, saw them come down—buried in the dirt, there's maybe eight of them. Growing."

"Eight of what, Dr. Wu?" Owen asked, stepping forward.

"I—I'm not sure," he said. "But they can't be safe. I haven't been able to test their genetic material yet, but if I'm right about what I think—"

He was interrupted by a loud rumbling sound as something knocked their vehicle off its wheels. The two troopers still sitting in it jumped as it rolled over, the ground bulging underneath it. All their guns were suddenly trained on that spot, all eyes fixed on the mysterious movement.

"That one of 'em?" Owen asked, pistol in his good hand.

"It's...bigger than I expected," said Wu.

Without warning, whiplike tendrils burst from the ground all around the bulge, one of them gripping a trooper in its coils. They all whirled around and opened fire on it, severing the appendage, but the others didn't seem to react to the loss of the one: they continued to whirl around, grasping at whatever was within reach.

"Everyone fall back!" shouted Owen, trying to get out of reach of the tentacles. One of them swiveled around to face him, folds on its ends opening up to reveal a bizarre eye on the inside—a violent shade of pink, with an X-shaped pupil in the center. Without a moment's hesitation, he shot it cleanly in the middle of the pupil, continuing to back away.

The blind tentacle swung around, crashing into the overturned vehicle and twisting itself around the door. It tore the door off of its hinges, throwing it aside a moment later; this decapitated another of the tendrils, and the remaining ones grabbed the blind one by its base and tore it out of the ground. Vomit-colored fluids drained from its severed end. As the tentacles threw aside their maimed member, the humans took the distraction as an opportunity to back away.

"Wu, if you know anything about this, now would be a good time to tell us," said Owen.

"Its biology is like nothing back home," began Wu. "Obviously, the appendages operate autonomously, but they may have a ganglion hub somewhere in the central disc that allows communication and sensory input—"

"English, please," said Owen.

"The tentacles see and think on their own, but the creature's body may have a kind of...neurological connection, like a brain," said Wu.

"Aim for the middle!" shouted Owen, and they opened fire again. The tentacles whirled around in confusion, some of them exposing their eyes to locate their enemies only to have their eyes blown out by gunfire. The vehicle was the nearest large object, and the tentacles apparently took this to mean it was the source of the danger and wrapped around it, dragging it toward the bulge. Or were they trying to protect their body?

The dinosaurs, meanwhile, were getting agitated, and some of them were turning and fleeing toward the open field. As they did, more tentacles erupted from the ground, grasping for the dinosaurs. Owen watched in horror as an entire _Stegosaurus_ was dragged, spiked tail flailing uselessly, toward a circular maw that emerged from the ground, consuming the dinosaur plates and all. Others were downed, tripped up by tentacles wrapped around their legs.

The creature nearer them had begun to shift, dirt spilling out of the way, as bullets put holes in the vehicle between ACU and the monster. Suddenly, a gaping mouth shot forth, exposing itself and the thousands of sharp, hooked teeth that lined its jawless edge. As the vehicle was forced into it by the tentacles, the creature emerged fully from the dirt.

"Holy _mother!_ " Owen shouted, unable to tear his gaze away.

The creature was enormous, easily the size of one of their _Apatosaurus_ , and its toothy ring was directly on top of its body and surrounded by more tentacles than they had expected. Around its body, below the mass of tentacles, were sixteen insect-like legs, each ending in two-toed feet with enormous claws. The way its legs moved didn't even make sense; they should have overlapped one another as it staggered from its pit, but somehow they moved fluidly, never so much as brushing against each other. On its underside was a pair of oar-shaped appendages, the inner side of each one covered in foot-long spines dripping with a dark red substance. Between these and its legs, there were countless vine-like strands that descended into the dirt, which it snapped off as it stepped away from where it had emerged. As its mouth gulped their vehicle down whole, the mouth retracted back into its position at the top of the monster's body, its contents apparently vanishing—there was no way that it could have swallowed that so easily, but it was just gone, as though its mouth were a black hole.

The other creatures, farther away, were emerging as well, sights set on the fleeing dinosaurs. ACU managed to open fire on the one facing them, but if it could feel the holes put into it by their bullets, it didn't show any sign of it. They backed away into the trees as it approached, hoping that its size would stop it from following, but one by one it tore the trees from the ground with its tendrils, swallowing them as well.

"I've got an idea!" Wu shouted. "The trees—the creature was rooted to the ground when it came up. It may be able to pull its own roots up, they could hold the key to its weaknesses!"

"Lure it back to where it came up!" Owen called. They began to make their way back around to the initial attack site, the creature following them. They gathered close to one of the trees nearest the pit, hoping it would tear that one away to get at them too. But it hesitated—perhaps it understood their ruse.

"Gotta get its attention," a trooper next to Owen said. "I'm gonna hit it from underneath!"

Before Owen could stop him, the young man had rushed out, skidding to a stop under the beast's underside. He aimed straight up between the spiked palps, where he could now see a small mouth-like opening. But before he could get a shot off, the palps swept downward, catching him in between their spiked pads. His chest was pulverized, and they tossed him aside in a bloody mess.

Owen rushed over, though he knew that the man didn't have a chance of survival.

"No—no, what were you thinking?!" Owen shouted, both angry and panicked at once. "Come on— _come on_ , there's gotta be something we can do for you—"

"Owen," he wheezed, barley able to speak. "On the belly. There's a hole—" He coughed, spitting up something that wasn't blood. Owen would have felt for a heartbeat, if he was even certain that the man had a heart left. He wasn't moving anymore.

" _Get back over here!_ " another of the troopers shouted. Owen hadn't heard as the creature surprisingly quietly moved itself directly over him, sixteen legs on all sides. He looked up to see the mouth-like hole in between the palps. The creature's brain must be right up there.

The monster pulled itself up, and Owen barely had time to register what it was about to do before he was already rolling out of the way. Its body slammed to the ground on top of the trooper's corpse, and Owen darted for the tree, his bad arm aching from the roll. A tendril snagged him by the leg, but he pulled a knife free from his belt and hacked it off, stumbling toward cover. The monster clambered back to its feet, moving toward them.

"It's going to attack," said Wu. "When it does, move aside so it grips the tree. The roots should still be attached—" Before he could finish his analysis, the tendrils whipped out, and they all dove aside, Wu being dragged with them. As Wu predicted, it snagged the tree, instinctively pulling it out of the ground. As its roots came loose of the dirt, they all saw monstrous tendrils intertwined with the wood, a strange color that was both black and red at once, neither organic nor artificial. They were being pulled out with the tree toward the monster's mouth. For a moment, Owen thought they would snap, but the alien roots held true, being dragged out of the dirt. Other trees began to fall as they were pulled down too, the roots going farther and farther away.

Finally, something larger was pulled up from the dirt, something with a slimy sheen and a bulbous body. It had no features other than the mass of root-like tendrils attached to its top, but as it was indelibly drawn toward the monster's mouth, the roots began to act defensively. They extended over the monster, pulling away from the ground and binding its tendrils, trying to stop itself from going down the throat. But it was too large to fit; even as the monster's teeth wrapped around the slimy skin of the bulb from which it had hatched, it clogged the monster's gullet, becoming stuck. The monster staggered around on its insectile feet, finally toppling over. Its palps swung apart and together again in agony as it struggled to breathe through its smaller hole, making an audible whistling noise.

"That should give us a clear shot to the neuronal hub!" shouted Wu. "Aim for that hole!"

ACU didn't hesitate to comply. Every gun was trained on the opening underneath the monster's body, and as they fired, that strange fluid began to spill out of the hole, first as a trickle and then as a torrent. Finally the legs stopped moving; the tentacles continued to swivel around, but individual bullets put a stop to each.

"Dr. Wu, tell me that sonofabitch is dead for real," demanded Owen.

"I...I believe so," said Wu, running a hand through his black hair. "We now know for certain how to kill them. That young man...what was his name?"

"Rod Zblinski," one of the troopers said. "Our newest recruit. 'Least he was at the moment he got plucked out from the past."

"That poor man," said Wu quietly. "But if it hadn't been for him, we might not have found the ventral stoma. He may have saved us today."

On the plains of the valley, carnage was left in the wake of the creatures' attack. The pits where they had emerged remained obvious, so tracking down the pods the monsters had hatched from would be easy. And not all of the creatures had been so successful in their attack: one of them lay on its back, half its legs broken and most of its tentacles missing, its mouth a mangled wreck. A beaten but alive _Ankylosaurus_ lying on its side nearby told the rest of the story, bits of monstrous tissue caught on its spikes and tail club. Another monster had apparently choked trying to devour an _Apatosaurus_ tail-first, the dinosaur moaning in pain but the monster's legs twitching helplessly. The webbing of its mouth was torn open, its teeth embedded past the dinosaur's hips. Owen walked up to the monster, its palps swishing around weakly, and put a bullet directly through its disc. The legs convulsed once and then stopped moving altogether.

The corpses of mutilated dinosaurs lay across the fields, and the remaining monsters were off in the distance, ambling around and casually swallowing whatever they could find. Now that they knew how to kill these creatures, the survivors shouldn't be so much trouble; Owen was already visualizing strapping a machine gun to a Jeep and just driving beneath the monsters and firing straight up. He was just thankful that none of them had headed for Main Street. The loss of life would have been much greater had they done so.

***  
 **Bridge - Beneath Isla Nublar**

"Say it again, Owen. My mind is not believing what my ears are telling it. What kind of creatures did you see?"

"I dunno, Barry. Like nothing I've ever dreamed of," said Owen. "It was like nightmares comin' out of the ground. Wu said they were something that came through the hole in our sky; must've slipped in after Lowery did his analysis. We've got Drs. de Lange and Harding up there lookin' over the dinos, but I'm not sure we can save the injured ones."

"And we are certain that all the creatures are dead?" asked Barry.

"We saw eight come out of the ground, and Wu says there were eight pods growin' in the dirt," said Owen. "We've dug up eight pods, turned 'em all into salsa. Killed eight monsters, too. Lost one of our own to the first of the bastards, shot up the rest in armored trucks. Wu's taking samples, seeing if he can figure out what the hell those things are. Talked to Atlanta already, but she doesn't seem to know anything about this particular part of our situation. We're all in the dark, as best I can tell."

"Take a rest, Owen. We should keep an eye on the hole from now on, shoot anything that comes through. Soon we will have a better idea of what we can do from the bridge, but for now the most important thing is that we can keep all these people safe. And you need to recover yourself." He clapped Owen on the good shoulder. "You've been up against more than anyone could have imagined today."


	13. Mutation

**Gyrosphere Valley - Central Isla Nublar**

Dr. Suzanne de Lange shook her head sadly as she looked over the carnage the monsters had left in their wake. Fortunately, the creatures had all been killed, and the dying dinosaurs put out of their misery, but it wasn't enough to cover up the horror that the day had seen.

 _And we're still running out of air,_ she reminded herself. Things weren't getting better.

"Another one over here," called Harding, motioning her over. He'd found a badly wounded juvenile _Parasaurolophus_ , barely on its feet, half-concealed in the bushes. The creature shuddered, terror in its eyes.

"Let's get a look at her," said de Lange quietly. She didn't really want to see any more dinosaurs die today—if they could save just this one she'd be happy. "How bad are her injuries?"

"Looks like she got off better than some of the others," said Harding. "Lacerations are deep, and the left ulna and radius look shattered, but only a few wounds are still bleeding. The others are clotted...if we get an MVU over here quick, we might be able to set her arm, disinfect, check for internal injuries." He picked up his handset, and the dinosaur gave a pitiful whine.

The sound of an approaching vehicle got de Lange's attention; for a moment she thought it was the MVU arriving, but that was too soon. Instead it was a jeep, the kind the park administrators used. The door opened, and the pristine white coat and red hair gave Claire Dearing away in a heartbeat. De Lange hadn't dealt with Claire personally very much, but she'd heard Claire could be a headache. Owen had used the phrase "hot on the outside, but with an iceberg for a heart" once. Just from looking at her, it was obvious that Claire didn't spend much time outside; she wasn't even remotely dressed for fieldwork (seriously, heels? On this terrain?), and looked pale as death. Or maybe that was just from seeing the destruction.

"Drs. de Lange, Harding—tell me you've got good news," Claire said as she approached. "I was informed of an attack—oh, God, is that dinosaur injured?"

"Not just this one," grunted Harding, trying to approach the young hadrosaur to observe more closely. "Not sure how much blood you've ever seen, or if you're familiar with organs on the outsides of the body—come here, kid, we're gonna help you!—but out on the plains, it's worse than this."

"Whatever they told you back at the Control Room, it can't remotely convey how bad things look out here," said de Lange. "If you really want to see—and honestly, I wouldn't blame you if you didn't—I can show you, just over the hill here and past the treeline. There were around eight of some kind of unidentified creature, and we've documented twenty-nine of our own animals lost. Most of them were just swallowed whole, but the ones that weren't..."

Claire took a deep breath. "Asset management is my responsibility. I should see personally what happened out there, no matter how bad it might be."

De Lange considered this for a moment. Maybe Claire wasn't as bad as people liked to say. "If you insist on looking. I promise you, though, the Valley's not a pretty sight."

***  
 **Bridge - Beneath Isla Nublar**

"Boom! There we go!" Arnold exclaimed, looking over a three-dimensional holographic map of the island. He had managed to conjure it up using some of the strange alien control panels, and just now he had located a few blinking yellow points on its translucent surface.

"Find a way to patch up our sky?" asked Owen.

"Not exactly, but I did find a way to keep our air in here," he said. "In the maintenance tunnels, is what I mean. See, the old and new tunnels intersect with a third set that aren't on any of our maps, probably embedded in the island itself along with the bridge. 'Til now, we didn't have a way to map them, but with this, we can. The blinking yellow lights are points where the alien tunnels break the surface—and from what I see here, and the detail on this thing is goddamn near perfect, those are security hatches or airlocks or something of that sort."

"So we just get all the people into the tunnels..." began Barry.

"And seal up the airlocks behind 'em," finished Arnold.

"This man is practical—I like him," said Barry, smiling. "Mr. Arnold, I am glad we have people with clear heads like you on this island."

***  
 **Jurassic World Control Room - Central Isla Nublar**

"Good news, folks," Owen's voice crackled into Lowery's radio. "We've got a way to save everybody, whether or not our atmo-hole gets fixed."

"We'd all love some good news up here," said Lowery.

"Turns out, there's a set of hatches where the alien tunnels hit the surface of the island. Looks like they might be airtight. Get everybody in through those, seal off the park tunnel openings, close up the hatches once we're all in, and we've got a contained atmosphere," said Owen. "We're still figuring a way to read the alien instructions, but we're getting there. Between Arnold, Barry, Hoskins, and me, we've got plenty enough experience with deciphering codes. We'll have it done in no time."

"That is fantastic, Owen, best news we've had all day," said Lowery. "I'm gonna let Claire know about this. Bet she'll be pumped when she hears."

"We got work to do down here. Lemme know what she says. Bridge out," said Owen.

Lowery dialed Claire's number from his terminal, but there was no reply.

"Dammit, Claire, where are you?" he muttered to himself.

"You might try the phone, if you can't get her from the terminal," said Vivian, glancing over. "I've been having some trouble with mine."

Lowery walked to the back of the Control Room, glancing around as he did. They were only making a vague imitation of order in here; Zara was frantically pacing around on her cell phone with somebody, Sorkin was still sulking in a corner where they'd left her hours ago, and Atlanta was trying to calm down a panicking tribesman who looked like he'd stepped right out of the fifteenth century. Wu had come in six or seven times in the past few hours, asking for seemingly-random pieces of data from around the island. It was a good thing the visitors from outside weren't all seeing this right now, or they might have a riot on their hands.

He dialed Claire's number again, but still there was no answer. He didn't even go to voicemail; she was just straight-up not answering her phone. It wasn't like her, and it was a little concerning. But there was no telling if something weird had happened to knock out some of their communications.

Sighing, he turned to Zara, who had just hung up her own phone in frustration. Before he could ask anything, she put put up a hand to stop him. "If this is about the churros, I am _not_ in the mood to talk about it," she insisted. "I've already gotten five complaints about—"

"No, no, no, this has nothing to do with churros," said Lowery, mentally questioning why churros were a problem right now. "I can't get a hold of Claire, do you know where she said she was going?"

Zara sighed. "She went to Gyrosphere Valley, she wanted to see the damage. You know what, I'll get her. Anything to get out of this...this." She waved her hands around at the Control Room. In the background, Sorkin had started ranting about something to do with the lagoon.

"Thanks," said Lowery.

***  
 **Gyrosphere Valley - Central Isla Nublar**

Claire wasn't sure whether she was going to cry or vomit. She'd seen dead animals before; seven years of work at the park certainly had shown her her fair share of accidents and deaths of assets. But this was more than she was prepared for. Like de Lange had said, most of the fatalities had been consumed entirely, with nothing left, but the ones that remained were a horrific sight to behold.

The carcasses of the monsters had flooded the surrounding areas with a thick crimson fluid, which she was assured was not blood; she wasn't certain if that made it any less sickening. The fluid had mostly soaked into the soil, but the grass where it had done so was withered into brown straw at best and burned away at worst. The dinosaur carcasses were another story; rather than simply riddled with bullet holes, they were torn apart, sometimes totally in half, with bone sticking out where it didn't belong and organs sometimes meters away from the bodies they had been ripped out from. Only three of the bodies were mostly intact; a _Triceratops_ relatively near them, a _Parasaurolophus_ halfway across the field, and an _Apatosaurus_ off to their left.

Claire was speechless. She'd ignored her phone buzzing, though she knew somebody would be up her ass about that later. She was not in any state to talk right now. She hadn't been this close with a real dinosaur in years, and this was how it would happen? She remembered back to her first experience with a dinosaur on this island—a gravid _Apatosaurus_ laying its eggs—and how she'd felt back then. How had she become so disillusioned? How had she taken all of this for granted?

Movement nearby caught her attention. The _Triceratops_ 's leg had twitched. "Oh, my God, that one's alive," she said. Dr. de Lange looked over warily; she'd checked that animal over herself, apart from some lacerations on the face it had looked unharmed, so she'd assumed its injuries were internal, but it had lacked a pulse. She found it singularly odd that it would suddenly recover. Maybe it had just been a muscle spasm.

"That one was dead when I last looked it over," she said. "Something's wrong, Ms. Dearing, I think we should leave it."

"No, no, Doctor, the assets are—these _animals_ are my responsibility," said Claire, approaching the creature. "If anything can be done for them—"

Suddenly, mechanically, the dinosaur swung its head into an upright position. Without flexing its leg muscles its body rolled upright and stood as though pulled by strings, swaying on the spot. Then, without warning, all of its muscles tensed up, and its skin squirmed as though something were beneath it.

"Something's not right," said Dr. de Lange again. "Get back to the vehicles. We need to go, now!"

The apatosaur carcass stirred as well, and off in the field they could see the third mostly-unharmed corpse begin to move. The apatosaur didn't stand up immediately, but its head turned to face them; though its eyes were too damaged to open, its mouth opened slowly, unhinging like a snake's with a _crack_ of breaking bone. A bright orange eye, not unlike those on the monsters' tentacles, glowed from the inside of its mouth. The trike turned to face them as well, and its own eyes were a milky white while the two halves of its neck frill rolled back to reveal neon teal alien eyes like on the apatosaur. Its horns cracked, a blue-green slime oozing out.

"CLAIRE! RUN!" screamed de Lange.

They sprinted for the vehicles, all three dinosaurs in pursuit. Neither of the women looked back, but they could hear horrible screaming noises and flesh tearing behind them.

"What in God's name is going on over there?" called Harding as they rounded the hill.

"No time! Get in the jeep!" shouted de Lange. Their ATV might be faster, but the jeep would be better defended. The two of them leaped in, Harding just behind them. A second later, trees were blasted out of the way as some unseen force exploded the ATV.

Standing in the new clearing was the mutated _Parasaurolophus_ , its head crest having split and grown into a huge set of amplifier-like growths. They were so large that they obscured most of its face, though they could see purple alien eyes at a strange position on its cheeks. It inhaled deeply, a spiky pouch on its throat inflating as it did; de Lange realized a second later what it was preparing to do. She gunned the engine and they shot off. With a resounding boom, the dinosaur let loose the air it had stored out of its mutated crest, and dirt erupted into the air where the concentrated blast of air struck.

The other two dinosaurs had disappeared, but the _Triceratops_ showed itself not too long afterward. It charged into view, its horns having grown into jointed insect-like limbs and its back bearing armored spikes jutting out at all angles. With a terrible roar, it lunged at them, and they swerved away just in time. The parasaur was charging alongside them now, trapping them in between the two mutant dinosaurs.

"Both of you, hang on!" de Lange shouted. She slammed on the brakes, and both dinosaurs were suddenly ahead of them. The parasaur was the first to wheel around, the trike's bulk carrying it forward before it could react. She then hit the gas again, driving them straight at the parasaur. It began to inhale for another air blast, but before it could let loose, de Lange slammed the jeep into it. The air sac was punctured by the jeep's grill as the dinosaur toppled, and spikes shot out of it in all directions. One shattered their windshield; the jeep began to spin out, but she got it under control again.

The trike was starting to charge, and now that they weren't moving as fast Claire could see that its horn-limbs were adorned with huge barbs like the stingers of a scorpion, each flexing and dripping with venom. Small tentacles had sprouted from the edge of its frill, and a quick glance at the parasaur lying next to them confirmed that it was also starting to grow similar tentacles around its neck. The trike picked up speed as de Lange desperately tried to get the jeep moving, but one of its tires was snagged on the parasaur's tail.

Moments later, the trike stopped just a few meters away. Something else had gotten its attention. The juvenile parasaur they had been trying to save earlier had stumbled into view, staring with exhausted fear at the mutant version of itself. Before it could react, the trike turned its head, staring with its gigantic alien eyes.

" _No!_ " Harding shouted, but it was too late to take action. They watched in horror as the mutant trike's tentacles shot out and snagged the young parasaur, dragging it toward the creature. When it was close enough, the three stinger-horns set to work puncturing its hide over and over, its skin sizzling where the venom touched. The dinosaur wailed in agony, but soon was silenced as venom burned through its throat. Soon, all that was left of the dinosaur was its skeleton.

But now the jeep was moving, the wounded mutant having rolled over in an attempt to get back up. They could get back to the main roads and away from the mutants in just a few more—

 _CRUNCH!_

Something slammed into the hood of the jeep, throwing Claire and Harding from it and knocking de Lange into the passenger seat. The apatosaur towered over them, drawing its tail out of the hood; the underside of its tail had sprouted two- to three-foot spikes all along its length, and tentacles were beginning to appear on its legs and around its neck. More spikes had appeared on its neck's underside, and along its sides holes had opened to allow it to breathe while an eyeball occupied its throat. It turned its gaze upon them, stepping over the jeep much more quickly than it should have been able to.

Claire struggled to her feet, pulling Harding up after her. "Come ON!" she shouted at de Lange, who was trying to get out of the jeep still. The apatosaur's tentacled leg slammed down on the back seats, catapulting the veterinarian out of the vehicle.

All three of them rushed for the cover of the trees as the three mutant dinosaurs charged them down. All but the parasaur were too wide to fit, and so they began tearing trees up to make their way through. The parasaur darted in between the trees at them, seemingly en route to intercept before they could get out of sight.

"Up this hill! It's the only way!" shouted Claire. Harding and de Lange looked doubtful, but by now, the low roads were too far away to reach before the mutant parasaur caught up to them. They ran up the hill as fast as they could, already tired but too afraid to collapse. With a crash, the apatosaur tore down a whole row of trees with its tail, and the trike had dissolved even more with its acidic venom.

The parasaur was the first to reach them, but as it drew within a few feet of reaching the humans, it stumbled and fell, groaning in pain. It inhaled to blast at them, but without its storage sac all it could manage was a steady gush of air. The trike reached them second, and let out a bellow as it plowed into the ground, staggering back to its feet and snorting. The apatosaur didn't bother to try, having seen the failure of the others. It stood over them, menacing but out of range.

"That...that's the border...of their zone," panted Claire. "They...they can't...get any closer."

"The tracking tags," gasped de Lange. "They...they still work...of course..."

She had to admit, she wouldn't have known that the zone border was up that hill. It made sense, but she hadn't memorized all their exact locations; it would take someone who had spent years staring at maps of the park to get all those committed to memory. And Claire had managed to run all the way from the attack site to the top of the hill without kicking her heels off—de Lange had to admire her for that.

"Oh—oh, my God, are any of you hurt?" someone said, rushing up the road with several test tubes in hand. Claire recognized Henry Wu, but he looked different somehow. "I didn't realize the transformation would happen so quickly, none of my tests with lab animals had such a—"

"Dr. Wu?" asked Harding. "How long have you been here?"

"I've been in the field studying these creatures since they first broke through the barrier, why?" asked Wu.

"How did you manage to get from the lab to here so quickly?" Claire asked.

"The...the lab? I haven't been to the Visitors' Center today," said Wu. "Are you all right? You seem...disoriented."

"Excuse me, Dr. Wu. What year did you arrive here from?" asked de Lange.

"1990," said Wu. "I'm not sure why that's...important?"

Claire, de Lange, and Harding looked at one another.

"I'm not sure how this is possible, but that's becoming the norm," said Claire. "We need to get you back to the Creation Lab. There's someone that you should...meet? I'm not entirely certain that's the right term, in this case."

***  
 **Hammond Creation Laboratory - Central Isla Nublar**

"Now this... _this_ is interesting," said Wu, feeling as though he were looking at an old photo album. "If my theories are correct, this means it's possible to commit one's self to events unfolding on this island more than once."

"I'm not sure I understand," said Wu, both in awe and a little afraid. "What do you...I...we, mean by committing ourselves...myself? To events more than once?"

"In the years since you last knew we've learned much more about what's really happening on Isla Nublar," said the older Wu. "What you and Hammond planned for was only the beginning. I'm prepared to do more than staff this ship. I'm prepared to finish what it started, millions of years ago, when its original inhabitants crashed through into reality. When you and Hammond began building here, you committed yourself to being a part of the plan to give this ship a crew. But now, it's twenty-five years later, for me. I committed myself to a new plan. A plan to save us all."

"Dr. Wu," interrupted Claire. "You've known about this. You should have told us everything. What is this? Why are we here? What the _hell_ is going on?"

"I couldn't divulge too much information until we were certain it would happen within our lifetime," said the older Wu. "The ship would have taken a long time to charge—there was a margin of error of a decade, and that was in our most hopeful simulations. I'm operating under Masrani's orders not to speculate too much. Until he recovers, we are operating on a need-to-know basis, and currently, you do not need to know."

"If I may," said the younger Wu, "I'm under no such obligation. I'm not even certain what importance Sanjay Masrani's son has in this. Would I be at liberty do discuss what I know?"

"Now is not the time," said the older Wu. "Had you gone on to become me, you'd understand eventually. They can know when they're ready." He turned to Claire, de Lange, Harding, Barry, Zara, and Owen. "What I need all of you to do is this. Continue bringing the visitors into the maintenance tunnels; this ship runs on personnel, it'll begin to die if anything should happen to too many of them. Any dinosaurs that can be saved should be brought into the tunnels as well. They're especially vulnerable to any mutagens present in this place. Find a way to fix the hole in the atmosphere if you can, and above all, ensure the safety of _Indominus_. I've worked too hard on her to let her come to harm."

Young Wu raised his hand. "Who exactly is _Indominus_?"


	14. Into The Tunnels

**Main Street - Central Isla Nublar**

Announcements in several languages over the intercom system instructed visitors out of the densely-packed shops and attractions on Main Street as security staff continued to herd the terrified people toward the nearest alien hatch. Hoskins had taken full charge of the situation up here, with Barry's permission; he was really in his element telling _people_ what to do, not working with dinosaurs. Besides, his loud voice was the most capable of carrying over the noise of the crowd.

"C'mon, people! Hatch to safety's just down the maintenance road. Keep it moving, we're gonna take good care of all of you!"

"Excuse me, sir—sir?" A man approached Hoskins.

"If you've got questions, we can answer 'em once everybody's safe in the tunnels," said Hoskins.

"That's just it, sir, I've just...are you sure that's going to save us?" the man asked.

"Sure as I can be," Hoskins replied. "Those tunnels down there are our best bet for survival. You best get yourself on down there."

"Hold on a moment, you see—my name's Ted Garvey, I worked in maintenance in Jurassic Park," the man said. "The Park tunnels, they could be...well, not always maintained. Geothermal plant almost blew up, once or twice. We had a tunnel collapse, lots of people injured."

"I can promise you, Jurassic World's tunnels are in top shape," said Hoskins. "As head of InGen Security, it's a part of my job to make sure that there are no breaches in any aspects of Jurassic World. I take that job very seriously, Mr. Garvey. Our good captain is all about the dinosaurs, of course, and I won't say that's unimportant—vital, in fact!—but the truth is, this park's tech is all under my watch. So you can trust my word when I tell you, you're safer in those tunnels than in your own bed."

"The other administrators. Do you think they know what they're doing?" Garvey asked.

"I'm not gonna say anything bad about our fine leaders, but I do like to think that I'm the brains of this operation," Hoskins replied. "You see anything going on you find suspicious, or untrustworthy, you report it straight to me, hear? Good man. Now let's get you down in the tunnels."

***  
 **Jurassic Park Maintenance Tunnels - Beneath Isla Nublar**

"Come _on_ , girls! I know it doesn't smell nice, but we've got to go!"

Sorkin was, with some degree of success, trying to herd four orange _Parasaurolophus_ into the tunnels. They had made it into the nearby old Park entrance, but she was having a difficult time convincing the dinosaurs to enter the newer, alien part of the tunnels. They just didn't like the unfamiliar extraterrestrial scent.

Owen oversaw her efforts, chewing gum. She'd refused his offer to help, claiming that she knew the dinosaurs better than anyone in Jurassic World would. He stayed anyway, in case the parasaurs got into a stampede. Most people thought hadrosaurs were harmless, and normally they were; but they were still huge animals, and if they got angry or afraid they could trample a person to death.

"You got a wanderer, on your left," called Owen as one of the parasaurs turned to stray down a different tunnel.

"I can _see_ that!" said Sorkin irritably. "Come on, come back here! Where's the—where's the damn—" She fumbled with the Tanius 6J, borrowed from one of the Jurassic World geneticists. The smartphone had been used in place of her sound system in the research paddock, which she'd used to play recordings of parasaur calls to watch the dinosaurs' reactions. The sounds had been uploaded to the phone, but she was still figuring out how to operate it.

"Havin' some trouble, there?" Owen asked.

Sorkin threw up her arms, exasperated. "How do you turn on the damn recordings?" she asked.

"You using the right app?" Owen asked, walking over. "That's Snapchat, you aren't gonna get your sounds from here. Though it wouldn't hurt to see what this Snap from KittyLover456 is all about—"

"Concentrate on the matter at hand, Mr. Grady," snapped Sorkin. "How the hell do I close out of this asinine thing?"

Owen held down the large button on the bottom of the Tanius, and the active apps appeared side-by-side. "Just swipe away the ones you aren't using. The center button brings you to the main menu. Find whatever app they uploaded the dino sounds to."

With some trouble, Sorkin was able to locate an app whose icon she recognized, which Owen tried to explain was called Google Play Music. The parasaur calls were listed here, and she tapped the one labeled ParaWarningCry1. A harsh, guttural noise issued from the phone, which vibrated from the high volume; it was a sound somewhere between a growl, a groan, and a squeal. The wandering parasaur turned its head, nervously making its way back toward its fellows, who all sped up and reluctantly entered the alien tunnel system.

"Good...all right, let's keep a move on," Sorkin said, following the parasaurs and occasionally repeating the sound.

"A 'thank you' would've been nice," said Owen, mostly to himself.

***  
 **Jurassic World Maintenance Tunnels - Beneath Isla Nublar**

People were pouring in at a fairly steady rate now. Hamada and his colleagues were ushering them in the direction of what they were terming the Ballroom, due to its massive size; that area would be large enough to house the thousands of visitors until they figured out a better place for all of them to go. The visitors had been instructed to leave behind anything that wasn't absolutely necessary, so at least they didn't need to find room for tons of luggage.

"Incoming!" warned Miller, and Hamada spun around to spot a pair of glowing eyes down the maintenance tunnel they were guarding. It hadn't been fully cleared out yet, and they were to keep visitors out. Before the dinosaur could get any closer, he whipped out a stun gun and shot off a charge at the creature. It squealed, and skidded to as top as its muscles gave out; he prodded the _Troodon_ with his foot to make sure it was really paralyzed and not just playing dead. They'd lost a Ranger to one of these things earlier in the day, and he wasn't about to have it happen in front of visitors.

He turned back around to the frightened crowd. "It's all right, we've got it under control," he announced, though their expressions didn't change. "No dinosaurs are getting through here. Just follow the Park Rangers to the nearest safe area."

By his side, his partner Austin grimaced at the _Troodon_ as Meyers slung its limp form over her shoulder to carry it into containment. "We can't have another one getting this close to the visitors," he said. "If they start to think we're not in control, that's the end of it. A stampede in this kind of enclosed environment would be deadly."

"Dr. Wu says no lethal rounds," said Hamada. "Can't say I agree with him; if we could just take these bastards out, we'd have no trouble."

He heard a voice from behind him. "Hey. You guys work for Vic Hoskins?" Hamada turned to see a middle-aged woman facing them.

"We work for the safety of this park," he said.

"I was just talking to a man named Vic Hoskins; he was telling me that security is being approved to kill the hostile dinosaurs. Is that true?"

"Don't pay Hoskins too much mind, ma'am," said Austin. "He's excellent at what he does, but he can go to extremes. For the time being, we're putting our best effort into containing any and all dinosaurs. You're absolutely safe in our hands."

"You ought to be allowed to shoot them," the woman insisted. "I'm not sharing a bunk with something that might eat me!"

"Nobody's sharing a bunk with a dinosaur," said Hamada, refraining from rolling his eyes. "This island, and everything on it, is under our constant supervision. You're safe, so long as you continue on your way, and get to a secure area. The Park Rangers are here to direct you there. If you could please follow them, ma'am."

The woman grumbled more, but went on her way.

Hamada and Austin looked at one another.

"We've got to keep these people feeling safe," Austin said. "If we don't...things could get much worse."

***  
 **Bridge - Beneath Isla Nublar**

"That's ninety percent of warm bodies in the tunnels," Lowery announced, reading a remote connection to the holomap over his tablet. "Just ten percent more to go. How's our alien map looking?"

"Still a no-go on people showing up on it," said Arnold. "We've got full reading on most physical structures, but life forms aren't on display."

"Perhaps the original crew were of different biological makeup," said Barry. "We are all carbon-based. The crew may not have been. Who can tell, when they come from a place like this?"

"There's gotta be a way to reprogram the ship's map," Arnold mused. "New control staff, any ideas?"

"Ah...I can't even begin to guess," Lowery admitted. "Atlanta, you've got some insight into this stuff. Know anything about the map?"

"Only what we've figured out," she said. "Ship doesn't come with a user's manual. The old pilots probably didn't think it'd wind up in our hands. It's just not built for us."

Vivian chimed in, having been paying less attention to the problem at hand than the time-energy in the volcano chamber. "If only there were a way to transfer the functions of the Jurassic World holomap to the alien map, making it possible to understand what it means," she said absently.

Everyone stared at her for a moment.

"Oh, like actually moving the holomap down here, or something," she added, noting their expressions. "I dunno, maybe we could, like, hook it up."

"Vivian," Lowery said, "you're a genius."

***  
Within a few hours they had carefully detached the holomap display from the Control Room and carried it down the tunnels to the alien bridge. Setting it up had been somewhat difficult, but ultimately they had connected it to some of the wiring in the part of the wall that the _Troodons_ had chewed apart. From Lowery's tablet they controlled it, and as it lit up with the familiar cool blue light, the alien map changed. It seemed to recognize another piece of technology, and blurred as it worked to translate the human programming into whatever it worked with.

"Think it'll work?" Lowery pondered.

"I'm praying that aliens build better computers than us," said Arnold.

Atlanta looked at the blurring map. It seemed to be adding new components to itself. "It's more advanced than our technology," she said. "Maybe it's able to understand, just because of how simple ours is in comparison."

"I hope you're right," said Lowery uncertainly.

But she was proven correct a moment later when the alien map snapped back into focus. It now had blinking orange indicators that matched up with the holomap's thermal sensors, and what was more, the alien map wasn't just displaying what it read off the holomap—it was even more detailed. It had apparently scanned the island again based on the holomap's specifications, picking up the individual heat signatures on the island and rendering them in detail.

"Damn," Arnold said. "Those aren't just hot spots, you can see individual people." He put his finger over the holograph, on one of the orange humanoids. An inset was pulled up overhead of the map, displaying a three-dimensional image of the person the signature represented. Icons displaying the person's vital signs appeared alongside.

"Holy _shit_ , that thing's good," one of the technicians commented. "We can see anything with this—keep tabs on everybody's health. The ship's figured out our biology."

"As long as it's doing that to _protect_ us," Atlanta commented. "I'd like it if we know at least as much about the ship as it does about humans."

Arnold, meanwhile, tapped one of the larger heat signs. It had resembled a theropod, and was located in the island's north. A holograph of a _Metriacanthosaurus_ appeared, showing the dinosaur's pulse and brain activity the way it had shown the human's.

"Looks like it's not just _our_ biology it's learned," he commented.

Barry looked just as impressed as everyone else. "Perhaps things will finally start to get a little easier for us now," he said.


	15. Things Fall Apart

**Sector 2 - Western Isla Nublar**

According to the simulations, Isla Nublar was going to run out of atmosphere in a few hours. Most people had been crammed into the Ballroom and wherever else they could find places to put them; most of the smaller dinosaurs had been saved as well, but their larger animals were still out on the surface, hopefully oblivious to their coming doom. The older Wu had been particularly upset about the _Indominus_ being left out, but with so many people packed into the tunnels and not enough security to keep it under control, Claire had determined that it simply wasn't worth the risk.

Hoskins and Lowery had surveyed most of the island today, ensuring that they'd salvaged all that they could before the last of their air leaked out. They reached the top of a hill, breathing heavily as they overlooked the golf course. It was motionless, save for the slow fluttering of leaves as the remaining air wafted upward.

"Gettin' harder to breathe up here," Hoskins commented, squatting down. "Not a lotta time left. This island's gonna be dry as the moon before long."

"Well, the good news is, it looks like everyone's down below," Lowery said, sitting down in the dirt. "We might lose everything up here, but we'll survive, at least."

"For a while," said Hoskins. Lowery looked at him with apprehension. "Where d'you think we're getting air from in the tunnels? What we got left is sealed in, sure, but does anyone have a damn clue how we're gonna refresh it?"

Lowery was quiet for a moment. "I guess…I guess I thought the alien technology would do that."

Hoskins snorted. "That's what our fearless leaders have everybody thinkin'," he said. "Got a problem? No worries, the little green men have it all covered. Truth is, Owen and Barry have no idea what we're gettin' ourselves into here. They've got ideas, but we haven't taken _action_. Ideas are fine and dandy, but what're they gonna do for us when all the oxygen's been used up?"

Again, Lowery didn't have a response immediately. "Um…maybe we can explore more of the tunnels, see if we can find something for that?"

Hoskins laughed a little. "Boy, Barry's gonna be in a rough spot when that happens. With this many people we're gonna run out of air quicker'n he's willing to risk exploration. We're gonna reach a time when he's gotta make some tough decisions, and I'm not confident he'll make the right one."

This struck Lowery as ominous. "What d'you think the right decision would be?"

"What we need's a change in leadership, honest," said Hoskins. "Barry's a good man, but he's too non-confrontational, bein' French and all. Things on this island are gonna get ugly when air runs low, and he's not gonna be able to keep the people calm. Then there's Owen—I'm sure you've noticed his problem with authority?"

"I thought that was just with Claire," Lowery said.

"Did you know Owen was court-martialed at the end of his Navy career?" Hoskins asked. "He's got a dishonorable discharge to his name. Taking orders isn't what he does best."

"I…did not know that, no," admitted Lowery. "But, he and Barry have been friends for years. Owen trusts Barry's judgment. I don't think there'll be a conflict this time."

"That's my point," said Hoskins as they got up. "Barry's not gonna be able to make the tough calls, so when push comes to shove, we'll have Owen calling the shots. Barry's gonna go with whatever his buddy tells him is a good idea if it means he can avoid throwin' anybody else under the bus. Tell me, no lying now, d'you really want all our lives in Owen's hands?"

As they walked down to the golf course Lowery thought about this. Owen seemed like a good enough guy, but if what Hoskins was saying about his authority problem was true, then it wasn't unlikely that Owen might disregard input from Claire or other staff members in a tense situation.

"I guess…in an emergency, maybe we should have more sources of input?" suggested Lowery. He agreed that Owen wasn't the best leader for them, but he didn't want to voice it too much—he had a suspicion he knew where Hoskins was going with this.

"I'm gonna let you in on a little secret," Hoskins said. "You're not the only one who doesn't think our current leadership is good enough. There's a lotta people on this island, and a lotta them are scared, and they want something done about all this. Me and some of the Security guys are thinking that if things keep going the way they are, a…change in leadership may be in order."

"You mean a mutiny?" asked Lowery, not totally shocked, but still surprised.

"Let's not call it that," said Hoskins. "More like a recount of the election votes. Barry might've won when everything seemed safe. But when things start heading south, the people are gonna want a stronger leader, somebody who gets the job done and can make decisions on his own. It's not just Security who's backing me on this. Lots of tourists—passengers now, I guess—some of the animal handlers, some maintenance guys. They're worried not enough is gettin' done. If you're with me, you gotta let me know."

"I…I'm not looking to take sides, here," objected Lowery. "I'm happy if we all get out alive."

Hoskins smiled condescendingly as he patted Lowery on the shoulder. "That's your trouble, you don't wanna be a part of the fight. You're a smart fella, Lowery, and underappreciated. The park would've fallen apart without geeks behind the screens to hold it together, and you're by a long shot the biggest of the geeks. If you wanted to, you could get people to listen to you. You could get respect, if you stepped out and made it known that you deserved it." Hoskins took a pause to allow Lowery to mull this over. "That's the same reason you haven't had luck with women," he added. "You gotta show that you're in charge, that nobody messes with you. Women like a guy who scares 'em, just a little bit."

"I don't think that's exactly what women like," said Lowery.

"Trust me on this one," said Hoskins with a fatherly expression. "I'm speaking as a former married man; I know what I'm talking about."

"Hoskins, didn't your wife try to stab you at one point?" Lowery inquired.

Hoskins was going to reply, but he was cut off by a sudden rumbling noise. The ground under their feet shifted slightly, and they both looked down. Hoskins put one arm out, stopping Lowery from walking any farther.

Seconds later, there was a loud hissing sound as a jet of gas shot from the earth. Hoskins and Lowery both jumped backward, and the smell of sulfur filled the air.

"Gas from the volcanic chambers," Hoskins said as a means of explanation. "They're emptying out. We gotta get back to the tunnels before anything worse—"

Once more the earth interrupted him, but this time instead of merely shifting it shuddered violently, knocking them both to the ground. Hoskins struggled to his feet as Lowery tried to get up but was knocked onto his face by another tremor. As he got to his hands and knees, he saw that large cracks were appearing in the ground at regular intervals, like a grid, and that more gas was venting out from them.

The nearest crack was widening quickly, even as the gas emptied out from below; he tried to crawl backward away from it, but he could already feel dirt pouring into it from under him. He struggled to his feet, but began to slip backward. Hoskins reached out and grabbed Lowery's arm, pulling him back toward the ground, but even as he did the earth gave way beneath them and they fell into the crevice.

It was only a few feet down. They landed side by side on a solid surface that Lowery initially took for bedrock. As he tried to stand, a sharp pain in his right leg, he realized that he was mistaken.

"It's metal," he said, astonished.

"What's that now?" groaned Hoskins, rubbing his head with one hand while brushing dirt from his eyes with the other.

"The bedrock of the island—it's metal, not stone," said Lowery. "It's the surface of the alien structure. The island itself isn't the spaceship—the ship's encased in the island!"

The wall of soil behind them was slowly sliding away, the crevice growing in size. Hoskins looked up at the opposite wall, his eyes widening.

"Come on—move it!" he shouted, pulling Lowery to his feet. The grid of gas jets had fragmented the island's surface, and the square chunks of land were beginning to slide loose and fall southward. Isla Nublar was shedding its skin. Lowery and Hoskins swiftly moved to the side, panting wildly in the thin air, as a massive chunk of earth slid past them. Off in the distance they could hear solid thumping sounds as earthen chunks slammed into the rear end of the force field.

"We gotta get to the hatch, now!" Hoskins shouted. The nearest one was to the north of them, and that meant dodging around the increasing number of soil sections dislodged by the island's motion. In the failing air, Lowery wasn't confident that they could make it.

 **Bridge - Beneath Isla Nublar**

"It has been _ten minutes_ too long, I want to know where they are!" Claire demanded. "Are any park security cameras still working? If we can't radio them, I want a visual on the golf course!"

"Still negative on the cameras," said Arnold. "The quakes must've knocked them all out. We're scanning now to see if anything up there is still active, but something's damaged the power lines."

Frustrated, Claire turned to Owen. "Isn't there something you can do to reconnect the power to surveillance?" she asked. "You've been all through these tunnels, you must know where the—the power junctions, or whatever, where they are."

Owen rolled his eyes. "Look, mechanics are not my thing," he said. "I work with the animals; the machines are Lowery's area of expertise. And currently, he is MIA on the surface while the island shakes itself apart, and _whose_ idea was it to conduct a final surface survey?"

"Mr. Grady, this is _really_ an inopportune time for you to give lip!" Claire exclaimed. "We've got two missing men up there, and I am not losing anyone today! Barry, what is the status on our air?"

"Contained within the tunnels, ma'am," Barry replied, trying to keep a level voice. He remained at the holographic map with Arnold; something was happening to interfere with it, and they'd lost their ability to track anything on the surface. The outline of the island's features had become blurry.

"The air on the _surface!_ " said Claire. "How long do Hoskins and Lowery have?"

"It looks like the rate of air loss is increasing," said Barry through gritted teeth. "They have…maybe a few minutes. An hour, if they are lucky."

Zara bustled into the room. "Ma'am—I've got a report—"

"Not now," Claire interrupted. "Mr. Arnold, have you got that map fixed yet?"

"It's gonna take time," Arnold replied. "First I've got to figure out what's causing it to blur like this."

Claire groaned in frustration. Zara took a step closer. "This report. It's from—"

"Zara, if you can't tell, we are _very_ busy trying to get a crisis under control right now, so if you wouldn't mind waiting a few—"

"The report's from ACU, it's about what's happening on the surface!" Zara interrupted. Claire, about to speak, closed her mouth. "ACU reported that the island began venting sulfurous gases in a grid-like formation several minutes ago. Now the separated areas of earth are sloughing off the island in a north-to-south direction. There's massive loss of surface infrastructure, loss of surface water, and damage to the southern end of the force field. The atmosphere isn't just leaking anymore, it's gushing out. And…" She shifted the papers. "The loss of soil is exposing what appears to be a metallic surface."

"Then it's clear," Claire said. "We need to return home. It's the only way to prevent the island from falling apart entirely. Mr. Arnold, we need you at the control panel."

"But I think I'm close to understanding the change in the map," Arnold protested. "If what your assistant says is right, then the map's probably reconfiguring."

"Mr. Arnold, I respect your persistence, but there are more important matters than the change in the island's surface now," said Claire. "We are losing our atmosphere at a rate that will be unable to support us, and without any plants or water left on the surface, it cannot be replenished. We need to get ourselves home, right now, or everyone in this ship is going to die."

Atlanta, who had been pacing the bridge, stopped to look to Claire. "And what about Lowery?" she insisted. "If we don't attempt a retrieval, he'll never make it back!"

Barry put up a hand. "We may be able to save them if we can return quickly," he said. "If we are able to settle Isla Nublar back down in reality, they will have air again."

"And if we _can't_ do that quickly enough?" demanded Atlanta.

Barry couldn't make himself give an answer. Owen spoke up for him. "I'm afraid there isn't much we can do for them at this point," he said solemnly. "We can't afford to lose any more air down here."

Atlanta threw up her arms and turned to stalk swiftly out of the bridge with an angry groan.

Claire sighed. "Look, I don't want to look like the bad guy here. I don't want to lose Lowery or Hoskins any more than the rest of you. But opening an airlock to retrieve them would mean sacrificing some of the air we have left in here. With so many people, we can't risk that."

"We wouldn't have to lose much," argued Arnold. "Lowery's got a good brain. He's got an intuition for technology that nobody else has got. Isn't that worth a little air?"

"I hate to put a price on somebody's life," said Owen. "And I hate to leave a man behind. But Lowery and Hoskins volunteered to go out, knowing the risks. We've got some techs left—maybe none who understand the system like Lowery does, but…" He sighed. "Dammit, there has to be a way we can do both!"

Arnold didn't respond. He was watching the holographic map. The indicator he knew to be Atlanta was moving rapidly toward the south, and as the exterior of the ship began to solidify on the holograph again, it was becoming pretty clear what she intended to do.

 **Jurassic Park Maintenance Tunnels - Beneath Isla Nublar**

"Damn soldiers, coming in here with their guns…who does InGen think they are? What happened to genetic research and preservation of—"

"Dr. Sorkin!" Atlanta shouted. Sorkin looked up in surprise, her four parasaurs nervously eyeing the ceiling as the sounds of the island's soil sliding away rumbled above.

"Atlanta, yes, what's happening?" asked Sorkin. "I've had InGen Security personnel all over the area, saying they're concerned about a stampede if I don't—"

"Not now, which way is the nearest airlock to the golf course?" asked Atlanta.

"Why the hell does this park need a golf course?" asked Sorkin in frustration. "The feeding demonstrations I can understand, but how are we supposed to maintain a focus on the animals if our resources are going to—"

Atlanta groaned. "Never mind!"

She ran off again.

 **Sector 2 - Western Isla Nublar**

Most of the chunks of dirt had passed, sliding out of sight over the island's southern edge. Lowery suspected that they had punched holes in the force field like Jurassic One, but with so many of them breaking through, the air was now audibly rushing southward. It was a struggle to fight the wind and rapidly-decreasing oxygen at the same time, and Lowery and Hoskins were barely able to crawl over the smooth metallic surface toward the airlock.

Just feet away from the entrance—now raised, with the soil gone—Hoskins collapsed into unconsciousness. Lowery grappled with the raised platform the airlock was now on top of, reaching for the handle. He could feel his consciousness slipping away as he felt the handle come to his palm, and though he couldn't grip it hard enough to turn, he felt it move without his assistance. As the airlock door opened, he fell back to the ground. He remained conscious just long enough to hear another loud hiss of air like the one that had preceded the calamity, but couldn't think clearly enough to discern its source.

"Lowery…Lowery can you hear my voice?" He was pretty sure it was Atlanta.

"Mmmmmpheghrghlphugghhhhh," he replied.

"I think he's coming back to us," said another voice. He didn't recognize this one.

Lowery tried to sit up, but felt a hand gently push him back down. "Don't exert yourself," the second voice said. "You've suffered from oxygen deprivation. You need some time to recover."

He was able to open his eyes, squinting in the light. They were just past the airlock, and he felt himself lying on something soft. He realized it was a gurney from the medical center. Turning his head to one side, he saw Hoskins in the next one over, still unconscious but breathing steadily. Atlanta was standing nearby along with a doctor; farther back, he made out Claire, Arnold, and Owen.

"Lowery, how're you feeling?" asked the doctor.

"Leg hurts," he groaned, rubbing the leg he'd injured in his fall. "And…everything…is blurry."

"Don't worry about that. You broke your glasses while you were struggling outside. We'll have a new pair for you soon. Your leg doesn't have any broken bones, but there is a large bruise and possibly some muscle damage. If you keep it rested, it should begin to recover within a few days."

"And…and Hoskins?"

"He may have a mild concussion, but otherwise he appears uninjured."

"Good…good."

"You've got your friend Atlanta to thank for your rescue," the doctor said. "If she hadn't dragged you back inside, you might have suffered brain damage from a lack of oxygen. You only had a few minutes left."

Atlanta smiled, and Lowery grinned back weakly.

Claire spoke up. "Your friend _did_ act against orders, but in the end it may not have been as risky as we anticipated," she said. "I admit that we might not have considered all possibilities. Vivian discovered a way to refill the atmosphere—the sulfur jets turned out to be emanating from the ship's atmospheric generators, and after they had emptied out the built-up volcanic gases, we were able to configure them to produce an atmosphere for us. If we'd known about this earlier…what I'm trying to say…is I would like to apologize. For not retrieving the both of you when we realized something had gone wrong."

He might have only been half-conscious, but getting an apology from Claire was something he wasn't about to forget. He smiled broadly and managed to give a thumbs up. "Thanks…you're good. It's all good."

"If I'm being perfectly honest, the airlocks were _supposed_ to be sealed from the bridge, so I'm not entirely sure how this one was opened on site," Claire continued.

"I have _no idea_ how that happened," Arnold assured her, with a glance at Lowery.

"What matters is that you're back inside, and safe," Atlanta said. "You're gonna need rest. We think we've got a way to make the force field auto-repair, but don't worry yourself about it right now, you need to let yourself recover."

"Rest up that brain of yours," added Arnold. "I'm glad we've got you back. We've been hard-pressed to make anything work right without you."

 **Bridge - Beneath Isla Nublar**

With Hoskins and Lowery recovering in the medical bay they'd set up in one of the larger chambers, Claire and the remaining staff had recollected in the bridge. Zara had returned with another status update from ACU about the island.

"The soil appears to be completely cleared from the island," she read. "The underlying structure is totally exposed. There's no question about it. It's a spacecraft." She shuffled her papers. "Some of the buildings do appear to have survived, at least those with deep foundations. It seems that they became partially fused with the spacecraft's hull. We're working on a way to descend those areas of the hull to make the buildings accessible from underneath as well as the surface. The atmosphere is slowly returning, but we've lost most of the assets that couldn't be herded into the tunnels or placed in paddocks."

"So _Indominus_ is safe?" the elder Wu asked impatiently.

"ACU was able to verify that she's still in her paddock and appears unharmed," said Zara.

Young Wu raised a hand. "It's in my understanding that this is a…larger dinosaur," he said. "It seems strange to me that it should have survived with little oxygen for so long. Humans were barely able to survive those conditions."

"I designed her to have a more efficient oxygen-extraction ability," said Old Wu dismissively. "We can discuss it in the lab later. For now it's simply important that she's alive."

"Yes, she's alive," said Claire with an air of finality. "Barry, Owen, are we nearing a conclusion on how to maneuver the ship?"

"We are coming close," said Barry. "Without any major landmarks to guide us, it is difficult to tell if we are going anywhere, but there are indicators on the control panel that show we are drifting. Using these, we should be able to determine whether we are moving purposefully, in the event that we learn how to use the propulsion system."

"Turns out the volcano is more of a rocket," elaborated Owen. "There's one on each side, so it looks like we can direct ourselves. Once we know how to operate 'em, we'll be able to get this boat moving."


End file.
